


Gemini

by Thaleron



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Canon? what Canon, Depression, Eldritch!Catra, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sexual Content, F/F, Horror, Hurt feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Lots of character development from everybody, Monster!Catra, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Post Season 3 spoilers, Slow Burn, Violence, like glacial, pre-season 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-28 00:24:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 50,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20416821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thaleron/pseuds/Thaleron
Summary: In the aftermath of the portal, Etheria works to piece itself back together. Brightmoon is crippled with loss and new leadership, while Catra sits in prison awaiting her inevitable execution.As Catra fights to find what she is missing, a void within her grows. Something came back with her  when she fell between realities. Something dark, something old, and something hungry.





	1. Syllables

**Author's Note:**

> It has been a very long time since I've written anything substantial, let alone anything multi-chapter. I'll be adding to the tags as I go cause I'm real bad about remembering everything at once. 
> 
> POST SEASON-3 SPOILERS 
> 
> TW: Past child abuse, emotional and psychological abuse, graphic violence, panic attacks, eventual sexual content, and self harm

* * *

_Tik. Tik. Tik. _

Chapped lips roll over fangs to bare them at the empty dark.

_Tik. Tik. Tik. _

Her knuckles burn white as she grips the edge of the sink. She wants to tear it straight from the wall to stop that incessant noise. It makes her ears twitch in intervals, ticking like a metronome that softly drives a nail through her temple. Her claws extend and screech with a spark against the cold steel, but it’s no use. Reinforced. After all, the Horde rarely took prisoners that were delicate.

What the Horde didn’t outright slaughter, it took for display. For demonstration. There was nothing more demoralizing than watching the strong be cut down and humiliated. Even Shadow Weaver had been left to rot before being scheduled for transport to Beast Island behind closed doors, rather than be made to proverbially walk the plank before the masses.

_Tik. Tik. Tik. _

The mirror she has is cracked and separated by the electrified field that served as the doors to her cell. A cage for an animal on open display. The fracture cleaves her face in two, and too often she finds someone else looking back.

_Tik. Tik. Tik. _

Her shoulders hunch, the hair along her spine beginning to fray as it stands on end. The noise is grating on her last nerve and fills the silence in the worst kind of way. She’d much rather hear the metallic groaning of the Fright Zone as it shifts and breathes like some kind of monster. Instead, she was given the only cell with a broken, leaky faucet. Fucking figures.

The longer she listens, the more her mind warps the sound. The clicking of teeth, the sound of distant footsteps, and something akin to her name. Two syllables made it too easy. _Ca-Tra. Tik-Tra. Tik. Tik. Ca-Tik-Tra-Tik. _

She’d never really had this issue before, as she’d been able to tune out a lot of the eternal noise of the Fright Zone. Not every clang and screech is a ghost waiting to punish little girls who don’t learn to sleep through it. But, Shadow Weaver had been more than happy to take the form of that apparition for her.

_\--Tra. Tik-Tra. Ca-Tik. Ca-Tra. _

_CATRA. _

A hoarse cry of surprise is ripped from her throat, a flash of sparks brightening the space like a crack of lightning as her claws grate against the metal. It leaves her nailbeds aching as the sensation jitters through her hands. Her chest is heaving, heart beating fast, as she turns and sees a rather concerned looking Scorpia standing at the barrier of her cell with a tray of food.

“Catra?”

Irritation sweeps through her, coupled dangerously by embarrassment at being caught having a moment. Her snarl is all teeth as she stalks forward, stopping just short of the restraints pulling her stiff shoulders back.

“What do you want, Scorpia?” The tone she uses is scathing, and part of her swells in satisfaction to see the larger woman shrink back as though bitten. Still, she bounces back with an infuriating sort of smile. The one that meant she was undeterred and hiding nothing. The openness of it, the vulnerability, is what put Catra on edge. To wear your heart on your sleeve in the Horde was asking for it to be crushed. At this point, Catra doesn’t consider it a personal endeavor to do it herself, more like a common courtesy.

“Well, I uh… got your meal! Wanted to see how you were doing, pass you some updates… Don’t want you falling behind for when you get out,” Always remarkably hopeful. “Hordak’s been cooped up in his sanctum trying to repair it after the explosion. Without Entrapta it’s taking him a while.” Her claw comes up to scratch the back of her head at the mention of the missing princess. The one Catra had impulsively commanded be sent to Beast Island. She bristles at the memory. “I’m pretty sure after your, uh… punishment he’s going to send us to go find her. But don’t worry! He needs us to go get her, I’m sure of it. He’s got a whole lot to do around here now after the portal incident. Besides, I’ve been talking him down about you, explaining the situation, you know me—” She’s ranting now with that stupid smile on her face.

A hiss and the bang of Catra’s fist against the wall cuts her off.

“Shut. Up. Scorpia.” She is sure to enunciate every single word as slowly and as deadly as she possibly could. There is a frigid temperature to her voice that causes a flash of hurt to cross the larger woman’s face. “I’m not getting out of here. Not alive, anyway. Hordak isn’t going to make the same mistake twice. He’ll finish what he started the last time I was his prisoner.”

_Tik. Tik. Tik. _

“Come on, Wildcat. You know I’m not going to let that happen.” Ugh! Her unyielding, suicidal loyalty makes her gut ache.

“Why are you still here?” A subject change might help distract her from that noise.

“Because I’m going to get you out if things go sideways.” Her voice drops to an almost comically loud whisper. Carefully tapping the buttons on the console (it always took her a few tries), she squats to slide the tray of ration bars and water over to Catra. Her tail lashes, bi-colored eyes squinting in the dark. She doesn’t reply and ignores the loud growl of her stomach as she presses her back to the wall and sits. “Trust me, I got this. I got _you_. We can go somewhere that you can be happy.” Catra can feel the way her words betray her soft expression, her adoration. She refuses to look up and acknowledge it further.

“You need anything else? I’ll be back to bring you dinner.”

_Tik. Tik. Tik. _

“Yeah, I want a cell without a leaky faucet. If he’s trying to drive me up the wall it’s working.” She bites back.

“Uhhh…” There is a long pause that draws Catra’s suspicious eyes. Her brows furrow immediately at the confusion and mild concern on Scorpia’s face.

“What?”

“We… already put in an order for that. It hasn’t leaked in weeks. Is it broken again?” She leans up on her toes and presses her claws to the barrier to look at it. A growl of annoyance spills out from her throat. Was she fucking deaf _and _dumb?

“Don’t you fucking hear that noise?”

A pregnant pause as they both stop to listen. Her ear twitches to the beat.

_Tik. Tik. Tik. _

“No, sorry. I don’t hear anything besides you tapping.”

“Tapping?”

“Yeah, your claws? You’re doing it right now.”

_Tik. Tik. T—_

A heavy weight sits on her chest, trying to wrack her brain for when she’d started to do that and when she was sure she saw the faucet leaking. Her gaze looks upon her hands as though they didn’t belong to her, flexing her fingers to make sure she still had control. How hadn’t she noticed? The heel of her palm comes up to press hard into her right eye—watching the black spots dance behind her eyelid. Her headache was still present, and only grew worse with this revelation. Maybe she should eat.

“Catra? Are you okay?” There is nothing but concern coloring her voice, “Do you need medical assistance? I can ping for someone—” She’s reaching for the panel when Catra slaps the floor. The force rattles the bones in her arm.

“I’m fine.” It’s hollow and Scorpia knows it. She just doesn’t know when to let it lie.

“You sure? You’re kinda scaring me, Wildcat.”

“I said I’m fine. Just drop it.”

The clicking of her carapace gives away Scorpia’s anxiety as her tail curls. She’s got her pincers folded together against her chest, just staring Catra down like it was going to fix her. Sure, the other force captain was daft, but for some reason she was trying her hardest to peer through the sliver in Catra’s walls. She hated it, feeling picked apart and examined in her gaze. She told herself repeatedly that it had nothing to do with her personally, that Scorpia just needed someone to hold her leash. It makes it easier to snap, to point a stun baton at her with a threat that she was almost serious about.

Maybe it didn’t dawn on her that her quest for victory meant she was just as sacrificial as everyone else.

When it’s clear that Catra is not going to answer her, Scorpia deflates. It’s only a brief moment of defeat, knowing her, and she would be back with forgiveness ready and waiting by dinnertime.

“Okay, well, if you need anything you know I’m here for you. I always will be.” The sound of her footsteps on the catwalk lets Catra know it’s safe to look back at the empty doorway.

Her tail coils around her legs as she draws them to her chest, ears pinned and mind racing now that she is basked in a self-made silence. The broken mirror sits behind the flickering green barrier, high enough that she can’t see her face from this angle. She doesn’t know why it’s even in here. Looking at herself felt more like a doubt than a reassurance these days.

Despite the warmth of being curled up on herself, her right arm feels cold. The sensation will often, as it has worsened over the months, spread up through her neck and cheek. Icy needles poke at the back of her eye, inside her head, and briefly distort her vision.

_Tik._

Blue and gold eyes dart to the faucet, pupils shrinking as she feels the cold intensify into numbness. She sees a single drop fall and hit the inside of the sink.

_Tik._

Faster than she can track, she’s on her feet and has her hand clasped around the end of the faucet—trying to prove to herself that she wasn’t seeing things. This damn place was fucking with her the longer she was left here.

She waits. And waits. And waits.

Nothing.

She squeezes it so hard that the feeling comes back into her palm as a distant register of pain. Was she losing her mind? She can’t remember everything that happened in the portal, just that she refused to become _nothing._ Not until she’d known that she won by tormenting Adora.

The fine fur on her cheeks begins to clump as her eyes grow wet, her chest heaving in rapid succession as she tries her best to claw down air. It doesn’t help, and the fluttering tingle that spreads from her sternum sends her down to her knees. Her body shivers, filling with panic, as she is left to ride it out in a dark, lonely cell.

_Tik. _

* * *

Scorpia takes in a deep breath as she stands before Hordak’s sanctum. Having quickly figured out that Catra was lying about Entrapta, that she had pulled the switch that nearly killed them all with prior knowledge of that outcome, and that the Horde forces were in shambles after the princesses’ invasion, he had his hands full. Every Force Captain was working their butts off to get things back in order and repair the damages the portal had done, as well as trying to plan their next course of action without Hordak’s direct involvement. He’d locked himself away for the past few months, not speaking to anyone besides Scorpia on occasion.

Likely because he had grown used to her presence with Entrapta in the lab.

There was an air of… something around Hordak that she didn’t know he could exude. He was sad, or something. Angry, for sure, he was always angry. But sad? A frown crosses Scorpia’s features as the door opens with a low hiss.

“Uh, Lord Hordak?” She calls, not wanting to step from the darkness of the archway without consent.

“Get in here, Force Captain.” The metallic grate of his voice always made her shiver in the bad way. Head ducked respectfully, she enters the room and takes in the cool temperature of the place. The four panels for the portal have been removed and put into another room. The debris has been cleaned, too, and moved away from a conspicuous pile of gadgets, notes, diagrams, maps, and a plethora of familiar doodads. She tries not to wince at it.

“You wanted to see me, Sir?” She asks after a quick salute. His fancy new armor had been damaged in the fight with Shadow Weaver, and every so often it sparked in a painful sort of way. Dented, cracked, and falling apart, he was barely sitting upright in his chair. Looking at him, she begins to feel a creeping sense of sympathy. “Are you alright?” She can’t stop herself from asking.

“I’m _fine_.” His words sound like ash pluming from his throat, smoky and hot, “Status report.” That weird little demon-recorder-baby crawls into his lap and peers at her with unnerving yellow eyes. She really doesn’t like it.

“Well, let me get my notes out here… Just a second,” She fumbles to reach for the folders she has in her bag, carefully opening them with her pincers. Man, these things were inconvenient at the worst of times, “Ah, here we go! Sector NW-35 was missing some ductwork above the simulation chamber—no idea where that wandered off to—so that got replaced. Uhh, the portal did some funky stuff to our wiring all over sectors E-50, E-69, and SE-92. We got electricians still working on that, and they estimate a couple more weeks to get it all fixed. We got—” She happens to catch the short, dismissive wave of his hand. Thankfully, she hadn’t gotten to the part about the influx of patients in the infirmaries for people having conversations with their ration bars.

That portal was a nasty one.

“I don’t care about things that are _common sense_ to fix,” He snarls, levelling her with a dispassionate glare, “I want a status report on our weapon systems, our armies capabilities, and I want a plan handed to me in two days on how we are to strengthen our position.” Those blood-red fangs bare as his sharp fingers drum on the arm of his chair. Scorpia feels a sweat prickle at the base of her neck.

“Oh, uh, yes Lord Hordak. I’ll see what we can do. I’ll have Force Captain Grizzlor deliver the weapon and soldier report.” A quick salute, and she gathers her papers and stuffs them in her bag in her haste to leave. Before she can exit, she hears the demon-baby chitter, and turns over her shoulder to see it now perched on the rafters above her head as Lord Hordak rises from his seat.

“And Force Captain,” There is danger in his next words that sends a shudder of dread down her spine, “bring Catra to me when you present your strategy. Her punishment has been long overdue.”

She doesn’t get to reply before the door shuts in her face.


	2. Waxing and Waning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having an Adora-centered chapter this time. Unless pacing and details call for it, I'll be switching off POVs every other chapter. Next will be back to Scorpia and Catra, etc. That being said, enjoy!

The night breeze is warm and cools the sweat gathered on the back of her neck. Adora’s fists are raw through the wrapping on her knuckles. Her muscles sing and burn and ache as her chest expands to draw in a greedy gulp of oxygen. She swings again, snapping the target dummy in half when she delivers a vicious blow to the beam keeping it upright. It slumps pathetically in the burlap, held together by poor stitching and rough material. She wasn’t any good at sewing, she’d found, but it didn’t stop her from trying. 

Re-adjusting her ponytail, her gaze inevitably draws beyond the pasture they’d cleared for the training grounds to the edge of the Whispering Woods. The Fright Zone lays dormant past that long stretch of trees, silently licking its wounds. Their stalemate was unspoken and treacherous. The portal had fried their communications, so they had little to no intel on what their enemy was doing. Either side could be caught off-guard, but Adora wasn’t going to let that happen.

Bow said she needn’t look at gift horse in the mouth (she’d asked Swift Wind what that meant; he didn't know either) and that she should take the time to relax, but how could she? She was a planner and used to action. Doing nothing made her uncomfortable and restless. If she wasn’t in a constant state of readiness, who would be?

The burden of She-Ra sits heavy upon her shoulders, both literally and figuratively. The sword is wrapped in her jacket and stock-straight in the ground near an archery target full of holes. The shimmering blue of the blade catches the moonlight, humming with energy that causes her skin to prickle. Half the reason she trains like this is so that she can pass out afterward, less the sword keep her up all night with that anxious whispering and thrumming.

With great reluctance she takes her jacket from the pommel and throws it over one shoulder (it was way too hot now to put it on all the way) and pulls the sword from the ground. It’s nearly vibrating in her hand.

“I wish you would just tell me what you want me to do,” She mutters to it. The voices in the back of her mind are distant. Adora despised this cryptic crap. Puzzles that didn’t involve punching were not her strong suit. “Fine. I’m sure you’ll find the _most convenient time_ to let me know.” Her sarcasm was thick, but she knew that the universe had a great sense of dramatic timing.

Strapping it to her back and ignoring the shiver it rattles through her shoulder blades, she drags her exhausted body inside the walls of the castle.

Making a pit stop in the kitchen, much to the displeasure of the noses of the staff, she tries her best to hold the snacks she’d grabbed away from the sweatiest parts of her person. Winding through the halls, she isn’t surprised that most of the day staff have already gone home for the evening. With everything as quiet as it has been, they haven’t been having very many war-table meetings that would warrant their involvement.

That, and it seemed like a lot of them were uncomfortable sticking around after nightfall since it was decided Shadow Weaver would stay.

Adora still catches herself jumping at slithering shadows even outside of her presence, and she makes a valiant point to avoid her as much as possible because of it.

Adjusting the food she’d relented to wrapping in her jacket (she’d throw it in the laundry before she slept), she softly knocks on the door to a room that is not hers.

“Who is it?” The voice from within sounds tense.

“It’s Adora. Can I come in? I brought some snacks.”

There is a tell-tale _bwmp _from the other side and Queen Glimmer opens the door almost immediately. Residual sparks from her teleportation fade around her form, the shine not quite finding her eyes. She looks tired but meets Adora’s smile with grace.

“I swear, the poor kitchen has had it hard since you moved in. Are you ever not hungry?” Glimmer asks in good humor. Still, it rings just a bit less sassy than usual.

“Yeah, when I’m sleeping,” That earns her a giggle, “Do you mind if I come in? I can’t eat all these myself.”

“Do I mind if you come in_?_” Glimmer snorts, “Don’t be a doofus. And yes, you can, I’ve _seen you do it._” She steps aside to let her by and shuts the door behind her. The new queen of Brightmoon had refused to move from her old room, and it still held all the natural charm of when she was a princess. Pink, sparkly, and soft. She never saw Angella’s room to compare.

Adora makes it her duty to visit and talk to Glimmer as much as she can when she’s not being whisked away for meetings or training. To be honest, she misses her a lot.

She can’t even speak for how Bow has been feeling over the months.

“Sorry I’m smelly, by the way,” If she could smell herself now, she was sure poor Glimmer could. Regardless, she can’t help but grin at the dismissive wave the warning gets. A friend who deals with post-workout stench is a best friend, indeed. “So, what’s new?” Adora asks when she gets comfortable with a flat pillow on the floor. Glimmer flops herself into a chair that nearly eats her whole with a long, loud groan. Her hands reach up towards the ceiling, as though pleading with a higher entity for a break.

“Everything, apparently. We still can’t get our comms working, but we’ve narrowed it down to interference from the First Ones temple in the Whispering Woods. So, that’s fun. Fielding supplies to villages and keeping in contact with other kingdoms is super tedious. The Seagate is all… glitchy, I guess. Perfuma told me last time we talked that the woods are _extra_ weird. Whatever that means.” Gods, she sounds exhausted. Adora places a few comforting pats on her knee before she continues, “Oh, and Shadow Weaver is still creepy. I don’t think that’s fixable.” 

“Yeah that comes with the territory.” Adora is apologetic. She was continuously debating if she’d done the right thing in healing her.

“Does she ever sleep? I get complaints that no one wants to be here because she just… slithers and skulks all the time. Like there’s a certification for being evil that she had to pay to get.” Glimmer sits up to wiggle her fingers at her friend, who can’t help but laugh at it.

“I… wait, I don’t know? I don’t know.”

“That’s reassuring.” There’s more bite to it than she intends, and the queen’s face falls when Adora’s brows furrow. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just tired,” There is a pause in which Glimmer chews on her lip before replacing it with a cookie Adora hands her, “I keep wondering if mom would have kept her around…”

They don’t talk about Angella often. It’s still a fresh wound, even months after her sacrifice. No one is rushing her to get over her grief at becoming an orphan, but at the same time the tense silence from the Horde isn’t helping it go any faster.

“You’re doing your best, Glimmer. You don’t have to do everything on your own, either. You’ve got me, Bow, and the rest of our friends to help with hard decisions,” The queen looks frustrated, as this was not the first time she’s heard this. “We are doing what we can.” Her tone subconsciously takes on that one-of-a-kind-Adora ‘_I’m-helping’ _enthusiasm. Like she’s pledging an oath to this task.

It makes it hard for Glimmer to be angry with her.

“I know, I know.” She sighs. There is a lull of silence when the queen takes a pastry and busies herself with some thoughtful chewing. Adora just watches her openly, gray-blue eyes riddled with questions and concerns. She doesn’t know what all she should ask that wouldn’t add more stress to their precarious situation. “At least,” Glimmer starts once she finishes off her snack, “Shadow Weaver has some experience in running the Horde. It’s definitely not the same here, not at all, but it’s been a little helpful for figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing.” Adora’s brow furrows at the mild praise the queen offers.

“I’m… glad that she’s being useful. She hasn’t tried to do anything more with your powers, right?” The sword hums at the surge of protectiveness that moves through her like blood in her veins. Glimmer looks offended that she’d even asked.

“No, Adora. That was a one-time thing,” Adora blinks at her in surprise, “Unless you get captured by the Horde again and they threaten to rip reality apart at the seams.” She is starting to get heated. Adora already knows where this is going to go, and she doesn’t want to hear it. “If I _ever_ see Catra again I’ll…”

Glimmer has grabbed a pillow and gives it a few solid punches in her lap. Adora’s right fist aches for an entirely different reason now. Simultaneously, her gut twists in guilt and anger. No one has seen or heard from anyone in the Horde, not even Catra, for over six months. It gave her plenty of time to ruminate on her confrontation with her inside the portal, the ultimatum she’d given. They’d been playing a dangerous game up until then—one that neither of them could finish. Dancing around one another to avoid an inevitable outcome. She let Catra get away with too much and knows she should have gone through with every opportunity to end it when she’d had the chance.

She’d even let her escape with Hordak after it was all over.

Seeming to sense her distress, she gets jarred from her thoughts by Glimmer’s hands on her shoulders. Those lavender eyes fill her vision, close enough to see the shimmering strands of her hair. It’s both a comfort and a dread.

The look on her face tells her that the queen is going to dig her heels in on this one.

“Adora, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you but… You know we’re going to have to stop her.” Adora shakes her head at her hesitation and takes a slow, even breath. Unfortunately, the air is not full of the resolve she wants to feel.

“No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. She won’t be allowed to do anything like that again. I won’t let her.”

_No more chances._

Glimmer hugs her to her chest without another word, unbothered by her sweat as she presses her palms to her back and tucks her face against her shoulder. Adora holds her, too, and when they part she quietly bids her goodnight and exits the room.

* * *

Adora is clean, her laundry is done, and she’s crawling into bed when someone bangs on her door.

Groaning dramatically, she flops down face-first onto her hard cot and just waits. If it was important, they would know to just bar—

“Adora!” The familiar cry breaks as her door is flung open. Hearing the alarm in his tone, she pushes herself up so fast her back cracks from the funny angle she takes to be able to look at him.

“What, Bow? Are you okay!?”

He’s panting in her doorway with two of his shoes tucked under his arm. Holding them up, his dark eyes are wide as he rushes over, throws them in one of the unused chairs in the corner, and waddle-walks with the entire piece of furniture right over to her side.

“Okay, so, you know I was missing my other boot, right?” He starts with both of his boots he’d come in with in his hands. Adora pushes her hair from her face and she squints at him.

“You come running and screaming into my room about… boots?”

He is rapidly shaking his head as he continues.

“Listen! Just listen. I was looking everywhere for it cause I never misplace them. Ever. I’m very organized. Anyway, I found it in my closet but get this. I was missing my right boot… the one I found is left.” The archer waits for her to put two-and-two together.

“So you found the wrong boot?” She’s trying, she really is. It’s late.

“No! I counted all my pairs! It was the missing one, but it’s left _too._” The universe decides to spare her four functioning brain cells this time, “You remember that conversation I had with you when we were starting to notice all the weird stuff that was going on? About how I theorized that the portal and all those separate realities jamming against ours while the fabric of space and time imploded could have potentially tampered with _our_ reality?” He says this all in one breath. Adora is tired, but she’s catching on.

“I do remember parts of this conversation,” She sits up fully now and looks at his two left shoes. A cursory glance is offered to his feet just to make sure they both hadn’t become left, as well. Thankfully, things were weird, but they weren’t that weird yet. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“I don’t know, but this is really minor. We haven’t really gotten to venture out since then to assess the damage. I keep trying to convince Glimmer to let us go check out the First One’s temple to fix it so we can get rid of this interference and talk to the other princesses about what they’re experiencing.” Bow’s face takes on a very uncharacteristic scowl, “But Shadow Weaver keeps telling her there are more important things to take care of internally.”

Adora goes quiet in thought. It feels like a sin to even suggest this.

“Why don’t we just go?”

Bow blinks at her, then promptly points to the ground.

“Like, right now?”

“Isn’t improvising our thing?”

“But what about the Best Friend Squad?” She shares in his disappointment at how busy Glimmer had become. They both knew it was for the best, though.

“We can be a duo until she gets some free time.” Wishful thinking at its finest. “And we have Swift Wind. Sometimes.”

A moment passes between them. It’s quiet, but it’s mutual. The sudden and complete absence of their friend in the wake of tragedy is a difficult time to sit through. Like waiting for a broken bone to heal. Even so, it would never be quite the same afterward, would it? She was queen now, and that was still setting in for the two of them. Their jobs had stayed the same.

Hers? Not even a little bit.

Adora remembers him asking if it was selfish to want her back with them. They had each tried to take the blame for their feelings, thinking they were terrible friends for being jealous of her responsibility. As it was apt to do, blame turned into guilt, and the guilt manifested. Adora poured herself into being as prepared as possible, ready and waiting for whatever the Horde was going to throw at them. Bow used his free time to be beside her, ready and waiting to comfort and to guide the best that he could. Both had taken it upon themselves to alleviate whatever weight from their friend’s shoulders that they could silently bare. Neither wanted her to notice and thought it best that they carry these things out in secret.

“Okay, let me go get my stuff. I’ll be back here in five minutes. Put your good pants on.” He doesn’t sound happy, but he tries. With that, he rushes out of the room and down the hall.

Her muscles are already sore as she changes out her shorts for pants. They protest every movement of her preparation, though when she grips the sword they grow quiet. It dulls her pain and heightens her senses, not that she didn’t have a high tolerance for discomfort already. The whispers in the back of her mind remain too soft to understand.

A thrum of energy, rumbling like an engine in her palm, moves through her forearm—tethering her to the blade. She feels it like she feels herself, an extension of her will and the power to carry it out for the good of Etheria.

Taking a slow breath, she focuses on this connection and calls for Swift Wind.


	3. When We Are Nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oml i'm so grateful that you guys are enjoying this so much!! it means a lot, and i've got lots planned. this story is probs gonna be pretty darn long the more and more i figure out. hope you guys stick around for the ride! 
> 
> TW for posterity: here comes that violence i promised, torture

Catra’s knees are stiff, sore, and numb. The floor in Hordak’s sanctum is steel, just like everything else in this glorified trash heap, and so cold it burned. Her wrists are bound in cuffs tethered together by an electrified cord of energy. She could feel the heat from it every time she let her fists rest on her thighs. He’d left her to sit here while he took Scorpia into another room to discuss the plan she and the other Force Captains had come up with.

She’s not sure how long she’s been kneeling on the floor like this. That dark, self-destructive mask she wore urges her to get up—to make them remember she was here. Honestly, she was angry that she had seemingly been forgotten about at her own execution.

What else was new around here?

But, the anger eventually bleeds into fear as the minutes tick onward into hours. Her heart has been hammering so hard for so long now that she feels sick and her ribs ache. Falling into a rare state of fight or flight, her already splintering thoughts collide with her instincts. She could try to run for it. Would that make it last longer when they caught her? What if she managed to escape? Where would she even go? Her claws bite viciously into the meat of her thighs to keep herself grounded. She couldn’t lose her head, not now. Dying like a panicking, wailing animal was not how she was going to let Hordak see her go.

Bi-colored eyes look up and dart around at the four metal pillars that box her in—machines she’d had the unfortunate circumstance of becoming acquainted with before. She’s not sure if it’s the frigid temperature of the room, or contemplations of what was to come that cause a shiver to walk the length of her spine. Intimately familiar with fists and full-body restraint, the type of pain that came with her hands free was the worst kind. It reminded her that she was helpless.

“That will do, Force Captain.” Hordak’s rasp jerks her head around to look at the doorway the pair were coming through. She hadn’t even heard it open.

“Yes, Lord Hordak.” Scorpia salutes him, but she’s as stiff as a statue. Her expression is so clearly distressed that it makes Catra’s stomach drop.

_Don’t look at him like that, you idiot. He’s going to make you watch. _

Saying those words out loud would sign the contract, so she pushes them under the burning lump rising in her throat. Her hands are shaking in the cuffs when Hordak turns to look at her with a haughty smile.

“I’m not surprised that this is where you’ve ended up,” Catra notices that he has a baton clipped to his belt as he approaches and her fur bristles, “With how you’ve conducted yourself since Shadow Weaver’s escape, I was sure that you _wanted _this.” Of course, he was going to gloat. He was a reject just like the rest of them and had to take his petty victories where he could get them.

Neither of them would ever admit how alike they truly were.

The glare she maintains is devoid of any real emotion. Anger was so commonplace for her that it barely registered as something she was feeling and not just a default state of being. Still, she can’t help it and glances down at the baton. He notices.

“Don’t be a fool,” He brandishes it and flips the switch so that it extends and sparks to life, “This isn’t for you.”

Silence follows as Scorpia, who had been gawking in growing horror and indecision, meets Catra’s beseeching gaze and attempts to slide out the door.

“Stop.” His voice barks a command that causes her to shrink. “It will only be worse for her if you leave.” There is a dark promise in those words that makes tears spring from the large woman’s eyes.

“Right, ah… sorry, Sir.” Scorpia slinks over to his side and looks to mentally check herself before rushing to Catra and doing something rash, “What, uh… What’s her punishment going to be?” Hordak doesn’t get to reply before she runs him over with her words, “B-because we can still be useful! She’s good at being a Force Captain, Lord Hordak. She was just scared and upset. She wasn’t thinking straight, but she’s better now! Right, Catra?” She doesn’t wait for her, either, “We can go find Entrapta—” That’s the mistake.

The baton casually finds itself jabbed into a vulnerable space between Scorpia’s carapace on the side of her torso. The shock is so sudden and so painful that she can’t even cry out. Her body locks in a series of agonizing spasms that send her to the floor. Catra’s expression wrinkles into a snarl. It doesn’t stop the tears from spilling over. 

She can taste salt and iron on her tongue.

Hordak says nothing, though his expression has hardened over his previous satisfaction. Stepping over the twitching Force Captain, he patiently waits by the lever near the far-right pillar. Minutes tick by before Scorpia lets out a groan and starts trying to push herself back to her feet.

“What are you waiting for?” Catra’s voice has been so underutilized that it cracks and grates. She shivers, and right this very second doesn’t give two shits about saving face, “Fucking do it already! You scared you won’t be able to find her without me?” She spits. “You’re a useless coward.”

Their eyes bore into each other. A challenge between beaten, broken predators at the bottom of their food chain.

“You’re _nothing_.”

Hordak shakes with rage, and the roar he releases is raw as he throws the lever forward. His thin shoulders hunch almost protectively around himself while he watches her gaze widen.

The red field that springs up encases her in a literal, suffocating warmth. The walls of it shift and pulse like writhing flesh—alive and consuming. A muted gasp flies from her lips as the air is pulled from her lungs. Claws rise in panic against her chest, scratching like a trapped rat. The cuffs burn her neck when she thrashes to get her hands free. The pain in her knees is far beyond her reach when her eyes begin to darken with spots and colors.

She thought dying would be a lot more dramatic than this. Everyone imagines having the time to look over their choices, what got them where they are, and the people they were leaving behind. Envisioning those last, bitter thoughts of Adora never came. She doesn’t have time to hate, or love, or regret. She simply fights to survive as everything slows down around her oxygen-starved brain. 

Then, all at once, the air comes rushing back. She coughs, stomach heaving as greed drives her gulping lungs onward despite the way her vision swims.

“I don’t need you.” Hordak’s voice is low, his tone swaying on the unstable precipice of self-assurance, “I don’t need anyone to get the things that I want.” The weight of his boot is pressing down on her bruised, bleeding chest, “You will suffer, here, and in the end all you’ll be is ash.” His fingers clink together in a snap. The Imp pushes the lever and the field engulfs them in that heavy warmth.

A strangled choke struggles down her windpipe, her forearms shaking as she tries her best to push him off. He’s unmovable, watching her die, and smiling.

Her head rolls back, trying to open herself up as much as she can for anything she can get. It’s one of her fleeting, cognizant thoughts before her mind blurs. She’d have been proud of her foresight. It doesn’t work, though, and soon finds herself drifting from consciousness again. The dangerous pressure on her ribs grows, threatening to collapse under the strain.

The last thing she notices is how the temperature difference makes her sweat. Beads of condensation gathering on the metal rods that act as her final cage. A slow trail of droplets find an edge to escape from and drip onto her fluttering eyelids.

_Tik. _

Something hot surges through her gut, like a fist is trying to punch back against the weight of him that is breaking her. Numbness begins to spread through the fingers in her right hand—threading like vines around her veins.

_Tik. _

Her mouth opens, and her gums bleed. He doesn’t stop.

_Tik. _

The pressure on her delicate bones is too much. Something’s got to give.

_Crack._

* * *

Scorpia groans when she opens her eyes.

Her mind sludges through the swamp of post-electric-shock confusion to catch up to the current situation. There was no reason to have that baton turned all the way up. Not for her, at least. She stubs her toe and is down for a week at best. Still, the pain shows itself in the soreness of the muscles that spasm and twitch in traceable intervals. The sweat that had broken out and cooled mats her hair down to her face and neck.

The clamminess, the heat, and the spasms were all okay, though. She remembers the symptoms of severe electrical shock being covered in the medical portion of Force Captain Orientation. Hopefully, it wasn’t because Hordak made a habit of zapping his force captains, but now she sees why the slide is in there.

The gravity of where she’d left off causes her heart to stutter as she fully recollects the events. 

“C-Catra?” The hum of machinery makes her stomach twist with dread. No. No. No. No. Straining her stiff body, she manages to rock back onto her elbows, then her knees. Her neck is practically locked in place like it knows she doesn’t want to see what is happening. A visible clenching of her jaw steels her nerves as she forces it up. She could still save her. There had to be time.

She’d promised.

* * *

“Alright, Wildcat! Big day! Get your game face on.” Scorpia clumsily taps out the pin that unlocks Catra’s cell and approaches her in the dark. “Time to convince Hordak you’re ready to join the fray again.” She knows that she’s being overly optimistic, but it’s all she can do to safeguard her emotions from the reaching hands of fear and uncertainty.

“You’re unbelievable.” Catra mutters in her scratchy voice. She hasn’t touched her water from yesterday. This makes Scorpia frown.

“You want any of that before we go?” She picks it up and offers it to the prisoner once she re-codes the cuffs to connect her wrists and release her from the wall. Catra’s tail lashes quick behind her as leans forward. Scorpia is careful to tip the cup to her waiting lips, gently wiping away a stray drop that she misses with her tongue. It’s stale, she’s sure, but it’s something, “There, I bet that’s better.”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

The population in the halls is sparse, which is odd for this time of day. Where everyone was at, she didn’t know, but wasn’t going to skimp out on the opportunity for some decent alone time. She had things she needed to discuss with her, after all.

“Okay so,” Her voice drops to a whisper as her bulky torso dips quite suddenly next to the smaller woman’s ears, “I got a skiff ready for when he wants us to go find Entrapta. He’ll like hearing how prepared we are. If it turns out that I have grossly miscalculated, I can sting him long enough to get you free and—” Catra jerks back from her and stops dead.

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop putting your ass on the line for me?” She hisses, ears flat against her head, “It can’t be worth it.”

“It is to me.” There is zero hesitation. Catra only bares her fangs.

“You don’t even know me!”

“I know enough to like you. I know that you’re hurting and that you just want someone to care and recognize you for what a great person you are.” Her pincers rest on narrow, malnourished shoulders as she peers directly into those blue and gold eyes, “I don’t have to memorize your favorite number for me to see that.”

Catra’s fur bristles, her mane standing on end.

“Did you ever consider that I don’t care? That maybe I don’t like _you_?” Her tone would be scathing to anyone that wasn’t Scorpia.

“I’ve seen how you treat people you don’t like, Catra.”

“I—” Catra’s mouth clicks shut abruptly to end her sputtering.

_Hah! Gotcha. _

She tries again, weaker this time. “Do you think I’m really not asking for this by now?” The wind is gone from her sails, yet she refuses to look at the Force Captain anchoring her to the floor. Scorpia blinks, deciphering the question and finding it laced with such poison that she feels sick. That’s just… That’s not Catra at all. “My life’s been nothing but one big shit-show after another. What’s the point in fighting and starving for _scraps_?”

Scorpia’s mind reels and her chest hollows.

“You can’t be serious, right? I mean… You’re the most determined, scrappy person I know. What about all the people that want to help you?” Her brows furrow at the impassive shrug and derisive snort she gets in response. She’s still staring at the wall like it was pulling the confession from her.

“What people?”

A short bout of silence stretches taut between them—during which Scorpia’s skin and eyes begin to feel much too hot. She hardly gets frustrated or fed up with people, but this was not an ordinary circumstance. The well of her saintly patience had run dry.

“Can you, for once, respect that _I _care? That I don’t know what I’d do in a world without you in it?” Her voice is rising into a shout and Catra’s expression shifts to surprise instead of apathy, “I told you I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of this, so I will.” Her voice shakes at the end while skipping over a swallowed sob. It sticks in her throat like a dry ration bar.

It’s not surprising that Catra doesn’t have a retort.

“Don’t tell me how I’m supposed to feel,” She continues delicately, knowing that the walls are there and ready to push her back out of this vulnerable space, “I’m here for you. I promise you that.”

The feline goes rigid under her claws, features gradually morphing into a distant glare. Her shoulders bump off Scorpia’s hold to stalk past her with ears pinned and posture guarded. Why couldn’t she see that she was worth protecting? That this in itself was a testament to how far she would go to keep her safe? Catra has spent her entire life loving people that only hurt her, but Scorpia knew a good person when she saw them. It wasn’t fair to limit chances, not to her, and not when people always change.

“Promises are just words, Scorpia.” The reply goes by nearly too fast and too soft to catch.

* * *

It is impossible to miss the shadow that looms over Hordak behind that sickly film of red.

The rods that power and maintain the field’s integrity spark and hiss, disturbed by some unseen interference. The barrier flickers dangerously and blinks, letting in quick brushes of air that the large creature drinks with deep, rumbling breaths. Scorpia is petrified and staring, the pain in her sluggish limbs forgotten as a hand easily bigger than her whole head lifts. The brief spots of color that flash when the red dies must be tricking her eyes and bathing everything inside in a pitch black, for the clawed appendage lacks detail. 

Like peering into a void.

It slams against the barrier. The machine screeches and the rods whir to fight the disturbance. The frequency that fills the room causes Scorpia to clap her pincers over her ears. It doesn’t help, but the abrupt silence that follows seconds afterward sure does.

Scorpia watches in horror as the field fizzles out and dies.

“C-Catra?” She tries again. The beast that stands nearly two heads taller than Hordak certainly looks like Catra. At least a little bit. Its shoulders are broad and filled out, tapering into thick arms that hang to the top of the knee. Curved claws almost as long as her palm flex and extend. Dark fur, that tuft of cream around her cheeks, and stripes outline the vague idea of Catra, but the bulk and the fact that her right half was flickering, glitching, and deep black made her hesitate.

“C—” She doesn’t get to finish before her words are cut off by a yelp. Hordak has finally reacted and thrown a punch toward its jowls while trying to back away. The quick snap of teeth, the scream of metal and man, and Scorpia goes pale.

Catra grins as oil and blood trickle between her fangs, lifting Hordak from the ground while he fights to free his forearm from the grip of her teeth. Some horrid, choking sound comes from her barrel chest, and Scorpia feels sick to recognize it as laughter.

“Force Captain!” Hordak shouts, his voice strangled by pain as the tendons and sinew beneath his exoskeleton begin to rip. Catra is just holding him there, undeterred by the way he thrashes, punches, and kicks. She’s letting his own body tear itself loose.

Scorpia can’t move.

The wet pop when Catra closes her mouth is followed by a thud, then a groan. Blood too dark to be anything but foreign to Etheria spills from the gaping wound at his elbow. The beast rolls his limb around in her mouth, tasting it, before letting it slide off her tongue and fall at his feet.

He’s squeezing his bicep as he kicks back to scoot along the floor, eyes still slanted in a defiant glare. One of those massive hands lifts and slaps him literally across the room with hardly a pause for impact. The sound his body makes against the wall spurs Scorpia to her feet.

That was Catra. That had to be Catra. There wasn’t anyone else in there.

She’d promised that she would save her.

There is no use trying to creep. She couldn’t even sneak up on a normal Catra, let alone one that was a meter taller and had much longer ears. Choosing to look past the way her head dips to take a broad lick of the blood on the floor, Scorpia sucks in a breath and bolts as fast as she can towards her.

More than the breath is knocked out of her lungs when Catra whirls and jumps, vision swimming as she's trapped beneath that dangerous mouth. Dark, viscous liquid drips from her teeth over her face. It burns upon touching her neck, but she just needs her tail free. Just for a second.

“Catra, it’s me!” Catra tilts her head, and the grin that widens until it's nearly splitting her face in two. Up this close, Scorpia can see where the black has taken her features—stretching like infectious fingers over her nose and under her eye. The inside of her mouth is consumed by this blackness, as well as her entire right arm and shoulder. The void spasms and shifts, becoming different faces, different shapes. A different thing altogether. A damaged reflection.

“Sorry about this,” She mutters mostly to herself as she manages to lift her hips enough to free the bulk of her tail.

The stinger sinks too easily into the softness of her belly.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Catra seizes with a scream that dulls Scorpia’s hearing, shoving the woman away with claws that scrape grooves into her carapace and slice open her skin. A streak of blood is left in her wake, and the look that Catra fixes upon her is murderous and unfamiliar.

Scrambling backward, she is thankful that three injections seemed to be enough as the beast begins to slump. Her yellow eye rolls, but the black remains open and fixed on her.

It is not until she collapses that it loses focus but doesn’t fully close.

“I don’t… What even…” She doesn’t have time to ask questions. Getting up, Scorpia ignores her weeping wounds and scoops up the shuddering, shrinking body of her friend. She’s got the skiff ready, but her mind fumbles with where to go.

_Entrapta. I’ve got to find Entrapta. _

Before she fully exits the sanctum, she punches the comm and shouts at the first person that answers that Hordak tripped and lost his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW THAT WAS LONG SORRY.
> 
> you can follow my twitter if you want! it's just my personal account but i'll use it to post updates as well. 
> 
> twitter: @clambass
> 
> EDIT: PLS CHECK OUT THIS DRAWING (AND THEIR OTHER ART BECAUSE IT'S ALSO GOOD AF) OF CATRA FOR REFERENCE IT'S PERFECT: https://twitter.com/comfiecore/status/1167498848861925376


	4. Cold Feet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another Adora and Bow chapter! Had a ton of fun writing their conversation and unpacking some things for Adora. Glad that we got all that juicy info from the rebellions guide. 
> 
> that being said, this chapter is tame and humorous cause i like to give whiplash 
> 
> also CHECK THIS ART OF CATRA OUT FROM THE LAST CHAPTER AND PLEASE GIVE THE ARTIST A FOLLOW ON TWITTER they are incredible
> 
> https://twitter.com/comfiecore/status/1167498848861925376

Adora awakens with an audible inhale.

The sword is a comforting weight on her lap, where she’d slept with her hands folded protectively over the blade. It gets shuffled off to the side so that she can stretch her legs and arms with an obnoxious groan, drawing the attention of the pair of legs poking out from beneath a console.

“Have a nice nap?” Bows muffled voice asks. She’d settled down beside him after using the sword as a makeshift can-opener to pop off the panel and let him inside. The First Ones temple in the Whispering Woods was dark and quiet, though pieces of it had sparked to flickering life when She-Ra stepped into its belly. Light Hope had greeted them with choppy dialogue, and after figuring out the correct way to query her around her error she had informed them that some things had gotten… moved around in the messaging system's hardware. Bow theorized that she could mean wiring. This was out of Adora’s purview, so she’d been content to sit back and catch some sleep while he worked.

“I did, actually.” She replies while watching his boots and knees shift and click together. She’d mentioned to them before that she had issues sleeping in Brightmoon but didn’t want to draw too much negative attention by informing them exactly as to why. The bed had been easy to explain and replace (honestly it still wasn’t hard enough), mentioning anything more felt like she was asking too much, and the Horde had done well to teach her how to just shut up and get over it.

The temple was full of energy when they’d walked in. It hummed in a frequency she could hear, much like the sword, but was out of earshot for everyone else. It was low, familiar, and lulled her right to sleep. The Fright Zone had been alive all hours of the day and night. The inescapable vibration of machinery grinding, pumping, and working had become a pleasant white noise to her.

That, and the warmth of Catra curled at her feet that fought away the cold.

They hadn’t slept like that every night, not unless they were sure everyone else had gone to sleep in the barracks first and that Shadow Weaver was preoccupied. Getting caught curled together would have spelled punishment, and they’d flirted with that line enough most days.

When Bow and Glimmer would make pallets on the floor for sleepovers, it was nice, but still not quite the same. Bow doesn’t snore exactly like Catra did—with a quiet, involuntary purr that rolled off the exhale. It was hard to keep your feet warm in the Fright Zone, but when she’d complained about it is when Catra had made a point to get herself comfortable on her shins and coil around them. Her old friend had always had a much higher body temperature than she did, though it made for excellent snuggling.

Her cheeks feel a bit warm at the memories. Had she really grown to be attached to something as specific as snoring?

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Bow singsongs from under the console and nudges her with his foot.

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m just waiting on you.” She grabs the toe of his boot and playfully pushes it away so that it swings back in her direction.

“I didn’t ask if anything was wrong. And you haven’t checked on my progress, so I figured you were zoned out about something,” His head cranes awkwardly to get a look at her, “Ah, I was right! You’re brooding!” 

Gods, she gave herself away. Good thing the Horde had never considered her for spy work.

Her brows furrow, and her red face gives up the goat. Now, he slides out carefully on his back and sits up with a handful of wiring. She has no idea what she’s looking at.

“You okay, Adora?” Leave it to Bow to drop everything and offer his shoulder to her. His eyes are dark, open, and attentive. Ugh, it makes her want to talk about it. Her teeth find her lip and draw it in, chewing with a palpable anxiety.

“Yeah, I’m just… thinking.”

“Well, obviously.”

“No, I mean… just… hang on let me get my thoughts in order,” She can’t believe she’s relenting, but he only nods and gets comfortable to patiently wait for her to continue, “This might feel like a strange question but… would you be able to… I don’t know… if Glimmer did something really bad would you be able to…?” The words get stuck. She expects him to look absolutely offended that she’d used Glimmer hypothetically, yet his face takes a form of sympathy.

“You’re worried about seeing Catra again, huh?” His hand rests on her shoulder when her eyes turn to look at him. It takes a while, but eventually she nods in agreement. Stomach flipping and churning, she tenses for the rant she’s going to get. So far, anyone that had surmised that they were close (closer than she’d ever been to anyone) told her that she needed to let it go for the well being of Etheria. “I know you’ve gotten hurt a lot because of her,” She winces, “and that she’s hurt a lot of people, too.” Okay, she had made a mistake in bringing it up. Somehow, he seems to sense that she was raising her hand to cut him off and tell him it was fine, because he talks faster.

“But, you’re my friend and I trust your judgement. I know that this has been hard for you, even if you don’t tell us just how hard. Ultimately, it’s not our decision on how you handle it. You’ll do the right thing, whatever that is, but it doesn’t mean you have to…” He trails off, and when she glances at him, he cuts his finger across his neck. He doesn’t say it, but the implication alone still causes the blood to drain from her face. “I know everyone just talks about what a bad person she is, and the horrible things she’s done, but if you like her then I'll retain some hope.” He lays back and toes her hip with his boot again, “Why don’t you tell me some nice things you remember about your friendship?”

Adora has never, ever said any of the things out loud that she was about to say.

“Ah, well…” She trails off, falling quiet to see if he’d forget. The insistent poke of his foot makes her soften and snort, “She left a decapitated mouse in my shoe when we were kids.”

_THUNK. _

“Ow! What?! Why?!” He slides back out to fix her with a wide look and a twitching mouth—rubbing his head where he’d hit it. At first she flinches, then realizes that he’s trying not to _laugh_.

“It was a gift!” She screeches indignantly, her face burning and her lips smiling.

“A gift?!”

“That’s what she said! I didn’t understand it, but I just said thank you then threw it away later!” Bow spills into laughter and she joins him. She can’t even believe that she’s _laughing_ with one of her best friends about _Catra. _“She would get _so_ testy about that when I would tease her. She gets so fluffy when she’s mad.” Calming to a giggle, she wracks her brain and leans back to look up at the ceiling and drift.

“We invented all sorts of ways to spend our time growing up: pranking, playing games, making competitions. The Fright Zone is pretty boring when you’re young.”

“You were a prankster? Ms. I-Build-A-Battle-Plan-For-Dances liked to _prank_?”

“That was one time! And yes, we were good at it. The bane of the Fright Zone. We did everything together,” She hesitates now, shifting uncomfortably and tapping her short nails against the flat of the blade in her lap, “We were discouraged from getting close and making friends with other cadets but… With Catra I just couldn’t help it. As kids you don’t see any harm in it, but our relationship made us vulnerable.” Bow’s leg moves over to press against the side of hers. Adora smiles and rests her hand on his ankle.

“When my feet would get cold, she would sleep on them so I could get some rest. Sometimes, it was so comfortable that I would sleep in and she’d bite my toes to wake me up. She never let me be late to anything, even when I should have been.” There is a halt from beneath the console, drawing her curious gaze as Bow slowly shimmies out and fixes her with bright, watery eyes.

“That… is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life, Adora.” His voice is dead-serious. Her skin flares red in embarrassment.

“What?! No, it—She was just—” The savior of Etheria sputters and puts her face in her hands to hide it. He’s not wrong and she needs to move the conversation along before he realizes that she agrees with him.

“Uhhh, we used to write each other notes on the walls in storage rooms when we’d be assigned to different wings for chores. It would always wind up becoming a race to finish, since whoever was done last had to clean it when we were done and would risk getting caught.” And the faster they were done, the faster they could track each other down and be together again. Needles of anger and sadness prick at her heart, causing it to ache and clench in confusion. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to deal with this duality. Reminiscing on their childhood didn’t change the fact that Catra tried to wipe everything from existence because she was petty and hateful.

Adora lets her head clunk back against the wall. Bow says nothing, waiting for her to go on, probably. It’s not easy to talk about how she feels, but he’s the most patient person she knows. If anyone would be willing to hear about her conflicts, it would be him.

“I thought I knew her, Bow.” The rummaging next to her stops, “I feel responsible for… for letting things get where they were. Yet, I know now that no matter what she says she’s making her own choices. Six months ago I thought everything she was doing was my fault, and that every person she hurt was ultimately on me.” Oh, Gods, she might be starting to tear up, “I’m—I’m _angry_ with her. I’ve never been angry at her before, not like… like this. It’s so deep that I’m afraid I won’t be able to let it go. I can’t—I can’t live like this for the rest of my life, r-right?” Shit. Her arm comes up to hastily wipe her eyes. “Angella is gone because of what she did. Glimmer lost her family because I was too weak.”

“Adora, hey,” Bow has moved to sit beside her with a soft, sad frown on his face. His arm wraps around her shoulder, urging her head to lean onto his, “It’s okay for this to be hard. It’s okay for you to not know what to do and to hesitate. You’re She-Ra, not a robot, and you’re fighting your childhood friend on opposite sides of a war.” A pause to rest his cheek against the top of her head, hand moving soothingly over her upper arm, “No matter what she says, you don’t owe her anything. Best friends or not, you have every right to be angry with her and for you to do something about it. Which, you did, you saved Etheria.”

She sniffles and wipes at her nose, staying silent to relish in his comfort and try to let his words sink past the hard, barbed wall her self-worth sat behind.

It’s a problem with no solution, they both know that. She desperately wishes for a simple answer that was not so fatal. Bow allows the conversation to lull, basking in the gentle glow of the First Ones runes and the hum of the temple. Adora is raw and peeled open, shivering at the exposure that borders on painful. Her mind jumps through hoops to conjure a way to take all of this back and let him continue to believe that she was unaffected and ready to do what was necessary.

_I have to trust my friends. _

It’s something she’s still learning, trust, and it’s difficult. However, Adora wasn’t a quitter.

“Thank you, Bow. For listening, and for the advice.” There’s no good way to express how deeply grateful she really is, so she settles for that. It seems to satisfy him, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

“How’s it been going down there?” She asks, wiping her eyes as she sits up fully.

“Good news: I found the problem about ten minutes ago,” He grins and holds up a thick band of cords and cables, “Bad news: I have to fix the wiring scheme cause it’s all out of whack. It’s going to take me a while longer.” The grin falls as she squints at the stripped cable and the multi-colored wires that run throughout the inside.

“What does that mean?” She was far from tech savvy, and even less skilled as an electrician.

“The colors are wrong and out of order. I gotta pick them apart and twist them back together correctly.”

“Oh… that sounds tedious.”

“It is.”

Their eyes meet. She’s waiting for a time-frame, and he only blinks back at her.

“Well, goodnight!” He says with a smile and flops backward to scuttle back under the console.

“What?! It’s going to take that long?”

“Maybe! You might as well take another nap.”

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

She throws herself back against the wall dramatically.

“Oh, and Adora?” She quirks a brow down at him, “Thank you for trusting me. I’m always here for you.”

“Thanks, Bow. I’m here for you, too.”

* * *

“Okay, just for the sake of procedure—it’s in our contract and it’s company policy—I just… I have to ask.”

“Swift Wind, don’t—”

“I'm trying to save us some time—”

“Swift. Wind.”

“Has your living room _always_ been on your ceiling?” The unicorn blurts out. Adora and Bow both groan at the same time. The civilian he was speaking to gives him a cold, cold glare through horizontal pupils. Long, goat-like ears flick in irritation and jingle the rings in them together.

“No, it hasn’t.”

Adora does her best to physically remove the alicorn from the situation by shoving on his neck and shoulders. Her steed protests loudly but moves when he is pushed and relocates well away from the afflicted villagers.

They’re visiting a small town nestled on the eastern side of the Whispering Woods. Since fixing the wiring in the First Ones temple that stopped it from sending out scrambled signals from its messaging system, Adora and Bow had been running ragged answering distress calls that have been up for months. It was a lot of strange activity, with the most action having been a herd of aggressive cattle that had sprouted extra heads and had become ornery. Turns out they’d just had to make sure the other head got to have some food, too.

“Well, at least this will be easy,” Bow says upon approaching the pair. Adora gives him a look of exasperation, “Easier than trying to figure out how to help a horse stuck walking backwards.” Yeah, that had been a weird one. Some mirrors had fixed that predicament. Swift Wind had suggested they should consider patenting the idea of ‘Rearview Mirrors’.

Well, the only one of them that can reach the furniture that also has thumbs is She-Ra. Bow and Swift Wind watch her expectantly. She has no room to argue.

“For the honor of Greyskull!”

A flash of gold and she’s ducking into the doorway of the home to begin to carefully take down the furniture from the ceiling without breaking anything. The second she even breathed on it it would come loose, and brushing anything else would shake it loose, as well. It’s a lot more delicate an operation than she would like, but she finishes in record time. Upon freeing herself from the fanfare of the thankful village, she finds Bow and Swift Wind waiting for her near the tree line.

“Good job, Adora!” They both praise. She makes a show of putting her hands on her hips and brushing off one shoulder casually.

“Nothing the _mighty_ She-Ra can’t overcome.”

“Oh, by the way, I have to show you something. Can you come over here for a second? Give us a minute Swift Wind.” Bow says, and the horse looks mildly perturbed at being excluded, “Please?”

“Finnnne.” A gust of air pushes her hair from its neat ponytail when her steed takes off to give them some privacy. Brows knitting in concern, Adora approaches her friend and looks down at the tracker pad he had in his hands.

“I thought this was just an error, so I’ve been monitoring it for a couple of days and running scans,” His finger pulls her gaze toward a cluster of islands off the coast, “There’s been a distress signal coming from Beast Island.”

“Beast Island? That can’t be right. The Horde may have been wrong about the Crimson Waste, but that place is an actual death sentence.” Adora’s expression twists to one of thought. “Should we check it out?”

“I mean… if someone is actually in trouble, we shouldn’t overlook it. There’s just one problem.” They both know what he means, and Adora’s molars find the inside of her cheek in an anxious pinch, “We can’t skirt around Glimmer if we’re gone for days. These little things are easy to take care of, but it takes almost three days to get there by boat.”

“We can’t leave and not tell her, though, she’ll think something happened to us.”

“Are you guys going to lie to the queen?” Swift Wind is perched in a tree listening to their conversation. They both jump when he interrupts.

“Shh! Get down here if you’re going to eavesdrop.” Adora demands with a hiss. Looking proud of himself, the alicorn swoops down to land neatly between them. “No, we’re not going to lie to her. I think… I think we should just tell her we’re going to go.”

“I could take you guys! She might feel better if I go, too.” Swift Wind’s suggestion seems ridiculous at first, “It would be much faster for me to fly you, and you wouldn’t have to worry about getting marooned.” That’s not a bad idea.

“Okay, then that’s the plan.” Adora shares a glance with Bow, whose shoulders sag. It feels like an official ending of the Best Friend Squad, even if that was a bit dramatic. Swift Wind senses their distress and extends his wings to encase them both and bring them in to his shoulders.

“Hey, she’s your friend! She’ll understand that you guys are trying to help.” They can only hope for that outcome, but it’s hard not to be a little appreciative of getting comforted by an empathetic unicorn.

“When do we leave?” Bow asks while stroking his fingers through Swift Wind’s mane. He doesn't have to say anything for Adora to recognize that he's upset. She feels the same way. It's like delivering a debrief after a mission failure straight to Lord Hordak. 

“In a day or so, maybe? We don’t want to spring it on her.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Swift Wind nods sagely,

“Good idea, you two. Best to get your ducks in a row first.”

Adora squints up at the steed in confusion.

“My what?”


	5. The Monsters We Make

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a bit short, sorry about that! i waffled a lot with where to end it. hope you guys like more horror! thanks for all the kind words and kudos <3 they mean a lot! 
> 
> me brain is hurty from this chapter. minor abstract thinking is hard.

Heavy is the darkness that envelops the night, solid and suffocating with no stars to soften its dictation. The orbit of Etheria’s moons was synchronous, spaced perfectly apart above them so that they each refracted the same amount of light. This meant that the few days of the month when they were hidden, the nights were pitch and foreboding. Bathed in black, the skiff hisses to a slow stop over a vast, shifting ocean. It laps hungrily at the hull, the wind whispering as it caresses the sail. The engines power down to a low, idle rumbling that is quiet enough to be lost among the sounds of the sea.

The smell of salt tickled Scorpia’s nose as she carefully inputs the command to have the skiff stay rooted and not be coerced off-course by the waves. This was their second night out on the water, and it was far less enjoyable than the first. The lack of any light whatsoever had the big woman spooked. She’d never ventured this far beyond the Fright Zone and its surrounding territories before, especially not on Black Nights. This atmosphere was the stuff of nightmares, ones that her restless mind dug up and conjured in the absence of stimulation. Driving a skiff in a pre-plotted direction wasn’t hard and got boring enough for monsters to creep in.

Catra wasn’t good for much conversation in her current state, either.

Her body had gone back to normal (at least, she was sure it did, though there had been a lot of concerning bone-cracking and convulsing that happened during their escape), but she’d been trapped within the sweltering grip of a fever ever since. She’d never seen Catra so sick before, or sick at all, and her lack of knowledge in medicinal care shot her anxiety through the roof. Scorpia did her best to make sure her friend was comfortable in the small space below the deck, glad that she’d had enough foresight to pack blankets and pillows along with their food and water.

Speaking of which, now that they were anchored for the night, she was going to go check on her. Stretching her arms over her head with a wide yawn, she flips on a flashlight she kept secured to her belt before making her way down the stairs into the hull.

Announcing herself with a knock, she grabs the handle and opens the door.

“Catra?” Her head eases into the space she’s made, the beam of light cutting through the darkness. She’s startled to find Catra sitting up among the nest of blankets she’d arranged for her, mane standing on end and eyes staring. They reflect the light in an eerie way, one shimmering green and the other red, washing out her pupils. Her teeth are bared, but her face is confused and her gaze is unfocused. Looking but not seeing. “Whoa, hey, it’s me. You’re okay.” Scorpia’s voice remains soft as she pushes the door open all the way. Catra tenses, burrowing down into the blankets again with a shiver and a low growl.

“Boy, I don’t think it’ll ever _not _be creepy that your eyes do that.” Catra squints into the light as some recognition crosses her face, non-reactive to the joke. While she’d normally protest the breeching of personal space, she doesn’t move away or snap when Scorpia sits down beside her and presses her cheek to her forehead. Her claws weren’t good at detecting temperature like her skin was—less nerves. “Jeez, you’re still burning up. Let’s get you some food and water.” Sliding over a small crate, she grabs the items in question and turns to offer them. Catra is shuddering quite violently and looks at the ration bars and bottles with a queasy disdain. “Do you feel sick?” She asks.

“I’d throw up if I had anything left,” Catra croaks, gesturing with a shivering finger over to a small trash can she’d shoved in the corner. Oh, that was gross. Scorpia frowns, but it is only in concern.

“Well, drink some water at least. You need it to stay hydrated. Maybe you’ll sweat this thing out.” Having already tried to comfort her with back rubs, Catra had loudly complained that every touch upon her hyper-sensitive skin was like running burning coals over it. So, she didn’t do that anymore. It kills her not to be able to do anything about this, and has to settle for the reassurance that the fact they were out here at all was something.

Gods, she hoped Entrapta could help.

“Sure.” Catra grumbles, reaching out to take the bottle with a wince. She still insisted on doing some things herself. When she was lucid, anyway. The vast majority of the time she was out of it—staring at the walls, mumbling things to herself, shuddering and groaning in her sleep. At one point she’d even flipped out, screaming about monsters or something, and Scorpia had nearly fallen off the skiff to tackle her to the deck before she could hurt herself. 

“Just… keep resting, I guess. We don’t have much else on this thing. Had I known this was gonna happen…” Her companion’s brow furrows as she chugs back the water, blue eye sliding over to look at her as it lowers.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I feel awful that I can’t help you through this.”

Catra rolls her eyes and shuffles under the blankets so only her face is poking out. Scorpia gives her some time, thinking that there is something that she’s contemplating saying to her.

“It wouldn’t have been any better in the medbay in the Fright Zone." A pause to shiver, "Less touching, probably.”

Scorpia holds up her pincers indignantly. When the other woman falls silent and lets her eyes droop, she gets up and finds her place on the floor beside her in a similar pallet of blankets. The water sounds closer here than it does outside, pressing her ear into the pillow to listen to the muffled slosh of the waves. Catra turns and lays on her side above her, facing in her direction and briefly making contact.

“Wake me up if you need anything.” Scorpia offers with a whisper. Catra nods while tightening the shaking curl of her body after she rolls over to face the other way. Her tail falls over the side of the cot and dangles along the floor, swaying back and forth until it brushes Scorpia’s knee and stills.

* * *

With the Black Night has always come nightmares. She dreams of hearing nothing—not the waves, not the wind, and not even the sound of Catra’s breathing or whimpering. All is silent and uneasy like the moments before the fatal strike of a viper.

She’s facing the door, which is open and letting the night air in. It’s cool and warm at once, humid and wet in her throat. Something drips onto her cheek.

Scorpia frowns and turns over to check on Catra, maybe to wake her up and ask her if everything was quiet for her, too. She sits up and clicks on her flashlight.

_Clk. Clk. Clk. _

The creature on the cot is a tangle of too-long limbs and fur, its maw full of jagged black teeth that drip and ooze. It leans into her space, that white pupil burning like a star in the dark. The right hand reaches, tracing a claw along the burn it left on the side of her neck. Pain flares in her head, ears ringing with a sound akin to steel against steel.

_Clk. Clk. Clk. _

Its teeth click together while it leers inches from her face, her stomach dropping when she notices that its breath doesn’t have a smell—like it isn’t even real.

_Clk. Clk. Clk. _

The burn becomes agonizing, spreading up into her jaw when a claw pricks into the scab and releases a thin trail of blood. Head still ringing, she’s barely able to pick up the words it whispers against her skin with its cold, cold teeth.

_“Servant."_

Scorpia jolts awake with a gasp and fumbles to grab her flashlight. The beam shoots directly to Catra, who doesn’t move at all from her blanket cocoon and continues snoring. Her neck is throbbing in pain, the tinnitus fading as consciousness takes over. Getting her breathing under control is a little difficult as she gulps in mouthfuls of salty air. She can hear the ocean, the breeze, and the purr of the engine. She was fine.

Rubbing the side of her neck to soothe the fading pain, the light happens to catch a shine on her pincer.

She’s bleeding.

She spends time on the deck to help clear her head.

* * *

Catra’s dreams encroach upon her waking world, gnawing at the edges until consciousness is too frayed to separate. Rest is a hopeless endeavor, as the peace granted in darkness is short-lived. She’s plunged into nightmares over and over again, fragmented anxieties manifesting into shapes and realities she hoped to never live. Still, she cannot fight the fatigue of her body, or the vile hands that drag her back down into the deepest, rawest parts of her suffering.

Self-loathing overcomes the chill on her skin, heated and bitter in her chest as her eyes begin to droop. She’s too weak to carry on struggling, but it’s all she knows how to do.

Flickering shadows tear her gaze back open, gasping at a searing, unbearable heat that scorches her right arm. Fires crack and pop against her side, and through the blackened eye she sees Etheria burning. Screams ring in her ear, yet her left side sits cold and unaffected in her cot on the rocking skiff.

Closing both eyes tight, she recoils from the burning and the shadows that move past in terrified panic.

A shout of pain punctures the air and jars her from the scene, breathing in the taste of gunpowder and dirty water. The battle of Brightmoon rages around her now, but she only has an eye for the traitor that stands before her. She leaps and frames the spine of _<strike>her </strike>_their savior in angry red, bringing the warrior to her knees in the mud. The glee she feels at her almost-victory is reminiscent of the sickness that clouded her mind just before she set the world on itself.

Hate is a virus eating her from the inside, and with its guidance she sinks her nails into the still-vulnerably soft skin of She-Ra’s neck and bathes in her life. In another world, another Catra ends it then.

_“Catra, no!”_

She blinks, finding herself clinging to a stone while reality breaks apart at her heels. Again. Adora is crying out and reaching for her through the blinding walls of light as the splintering landscape separates them. She thinks of taking her hand, of dragging her along to assure their mutual destruction. Apathy, sudden and icy, changes her mind. A sharp breath and Catra is falling, drifting away from what was left of her pain. Despite the ineffable devastation she wrought, they’d still shared a perfect world.

Adora had still tried to save her. 

Catra had chosen her fate the moment it was offered to her. She’d emblazoned her self-fulfilling prophecy across her shoulders in shimmering gold. A snake that devours its own tail.

* * *

Nothing is not so empty as the meaning implies.

It’s hard to describe the weightlessness that comes with whole, soul-deep vacancy of self. Catra feels, but at a distance—as though she has taken herself apart and can freely examine the pieces without putting them back. Perhaps in not fighting the inevitable she has afforded herself more time to process her end.

No, not just hers, everyone’s.

Or, maybe, she had slipped into some fracture that the universe had left unhealed. A forgotten place where Old Things burrow and fester like maggots in a wound. Where sight and comprehension become aspects of faith and not of fact. The abyss that beckons is alive like a dark, writhing mass with no end and no beginning—stretching out into unfathomable depths. With fear far away, she strays from the light.

_To Exist In This Place_, comes a thought not her own, _Is To Be Infinite._

She listens to the soft voices that rise and muffle like the waves of an inky-black ocean. Close enough to be drawn into its orbit, she loses herself in the push and pull of its tide. It lacks edges and shape, formless yet expanding. A throb begins in her temple, an urgent indication of the _wrongness_ that is the seductive dark.

_To Erase_, it coos into her ear, _Is The Practice Of Cowards._

Something frigid and dense begins to coil around her right hand. The pain it shocks into her is instant, and she attempts to jolt back from an inescapable clutch.

_To Take,_ now it grates, and the voice alone pushes more of itself under her skin, _To Create, To Devour Is An Act of Godhood._

Catra cannot scream in this void. It fills her in all the places she cannot protect, spreading up through her arm, sliding down her throat, forcing its way in and around her eye.

_Predator. _

_Conqueror. _

_Servant. _

The ink it stains into her skin cracks like glass, bordered in light that seems to be fighting against the spread. There is something else here with them among the empty black sky, something that digs in and rips her from its grasp. The damage is done, however, and when she can hear herself again, she is sobbing.

Her thoughts are no longer detached. They sear and scratch and scrape against her chest, worming their way out in a distorted mantra.

_Adora made me this. It’s Adora’s fault. Adora made me this way. _

Catra can see Adora now, on her knees in what is left of the Whispering Wood. Crying. Sniveling at her loss. It sickens her.

_You made me this. You made me this way. You made me this. This is your fault._

Her claws hook and flex onto the edge of her world, hauling herself up onto the cool grass as more of herself chips and fades away—filling the negative space inside with anger. Whatever had coaxed her back is consumed by her rage, her loneliness, and the numbness that makes her rabid. She wants to hunt Adora until the end of time and make her suffer. She wants to conquer her again, and again until all she knows is the pain and helplessness she feels.

_You made me this way._

Half-blackened with madness, she stalks toward the unsuspecting woman and presses a finger to her forehead to draw her eyes upward. What was once a gesture so playful, so tender, was now twisted in malice.

_You broke the world and it is all your fault. _

** _“Hey, Adora.”_ **

** **


	6. Piece by Piece

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wowee this was interesting to write. i love entrapta so much so i put a lot of love and research into this portion and trying to nail down her character. hope it feels right! Enjoy fellas :3

Catra is too delirious to walk when they arrive on the shores of Beast Island, so Scorpia carries her. The day-moons are bright and hot and unrelenting, causing the feverish cat to squirm, whine, and shudder in her arms. Sweat is gathering on her clammy skin, matting down her mane of hair and slicking the shorter fur on her body. Scorpia is in a panic, wondering how long Catra could hold out with a body temperature this high. She can even feel the heat of her radiating through the blankets.

“Just hang in there. Don’t give up on me yet.” Scorpia pleads, moving as fast as she can to the tree line. They’d docked on the east side of the island where the Horde had set up a depot for refueling and supply drops to soldiers delivering exiles and prisoners. Once upon a time they’d even attempted to set up an ops base here, but that had turned out to be a disaster. The creatures of the island were big, mean, and territorial. Not even Horde weaponry at the time could fight off the constant onslaught the construction took, so they’d abandoned it.

“Hoookay let me get us going in the right direction.” Scorpia scours the trees for the marker and finds it half submerged in undergrowth. It points to an obscured path that winds between the gnarled trunks and dipping vines. Her heart beats hard in her chest, and with a glance down at Catra she pushes into the jungle.

The depot isn’t too far from shore, maybe about a ten-minute walk, but seconds in she already can’t see the ocean. The trees are thick and clump together like they’re competing for space they didn’t have, sabotaging one another by twisting their branches into a confusing canopy that had no end. The cover provided more than adequate shading, with sparse breaks of light to dot the path and lead her onward. More than once she stops and assesses their surroundings, tensing at every sound and flicker of movement from the foliage.

“This place gives me the heebies…” She mumbles to herself, knowing that Catra couldn’t respond in her current state. “Almost there, Wildcat.”

Minutes go by, surrounded by the distant call of birds and the buzzing of insects that threaten to distract from the seconds she’s counting in her head. Checking for markers as they go, she is quite proud of herself for staying on track. She couldn’t wait to tell Catra when she was awake and feeling better.

It is then that a series of violent, disrupting sounds start up directly in their path. Something is coming toward them rather loudly, and Scorpia’s tail curls around to strike in an instinctual, defensive panic. It jabs blindly at the first thing that pushes through the foliage, scraping off the rough metal of a Horde drone in a shower of sparks. Its guns begin to charge, humming with energy as Scorpia half turns herself away to brace for the blow and protect the bundle in her arms. One of the drone’s left legs seems to be having trouble fully extending.

“Emily?” She can’t believe it, but there are no drones that have purple lighting like that. The drone doesn’t have a face or eyes, yet the way it pauses before firing conveys hesitation. At this point, though, it can’t stop the charge and aims the guns up. The lasers blast holes into the canopy, splitting apart the branches and letting beams of light and leaves stream down upon its scarred, dented hide. It whirs, high-pitched, and folds the weapons back into its body. Quickly, it crosses the distance and presses its warm metal up against her side. Scorpia is so happy she tears up. “I missed you, too, Emily.” She’d throw her arms around the drone and kiss her if her hands weren’t full. “Can you take us to Entrapta?” The robot nods eagerly, beeping in delight, before shuffling off back into the trees.

With Emily guiding them, the journey to the depot is over in no time. The clearing that was once where it stood is now overgrown. The building is small, boxy, made of steel, and covered in flowering plants and creeping vines. The windows are broken, chips of shattered glass littering the ground in twinkling clusters as they catch the light. It would have been pretty if the walls weren’t covered in gouges, claw marks, and holes. Lucky for them, the depot and its supplies were kept underground for this very reason.

Emily limps around the back where a garage sits with the door partially torn off and bent upward. It’s enough space for the round drone to pull her legs in and roll inside, while all Scorpia has to do is carefully duck with Catra in her arms to avoid the sharp pieces of metal. Old parts for skiffs and fuel containers are scattered and pushed into corners, the floor smeared in dust. A few things Scorpia mistakes for tools turn out to be bones—very humanoid-looking bones—buried beneath jungle debris on the ground. Before she can properly have a meltdown about this, Emily goes to a nearby panel on the wall and plugs into the port. With a click, the floor shifts and slides apart to reveal a small staircase that leads to a flat elevator.

The ride down is silent save for the grind of the machinery they stand on. Scorpia’s arms have long since started to burn, even with how light Catra is, but she refuses to put her down. Despite being out of the sun, Catra appears to be no better. She shifts and groans, trying to completely tuck herself away inside the blanket as her body quivers. When her eyes open, they are glassy—her gaze far away. At one point she starts in Scorpia’s arms and scrambles with a yowl, staring at something unseen as the pace of her breath increases. Emily beeps curiously, walking over to scan Catra while Scorpia attempts to calm her down and get her to stop scratching her own arm like it’s crawling in insects.

The elevator hisses to a stop, and when Scorpia looks up she can’t help the way her eyes blur with tears. Sitting at a table with her fingers flying over a very, very old keyboard, is Entrapta. Her pigtails are ratty and tangled, yet still coiled beneath her and acting as a chair. Overalls ripped, dirty, but still mostly intact, she looks like she’s survived the six months well. Her face is glued onto the screen, reading data that is scrolling much too fast for Scorpia to comprehend. Emily lets out a whistle that catches her attention, legs folding in to roll toward her creator and accidentally smacking into a pillar before getting there.

“Emily, you’re back! Looks like nothing attacked you this time, either.” Entrapta lowers herself to pop open the drone and pull out a small device, “The signal from this repeater must be the right frequency! I’ll upload it to the loudspeakers and—” Magenta eyes suddenly notice her company. Blinking in surprise, she tilts her head and grins as a strand of hair lifts up her recorder, “Log: Day 186, Scorpia has just arrived on the island to rescue me! At least, that’s the assumption I will be making at this time.” She clicks off the recorder and hurriedly approaches with an eager “Hi!”

“Entrapta, I’m so glad you’re okay!” Scorpia’s arms are shaking from the strain, and slowly she dips to set Catra on the floor in order to wrap them around the scientist and drag her into a bear hug. She swings her around, ignoring the cough from the smaller woman when she is clutched as though she would fade the second Scorpia let go.

“Oh, I’m more than okay! You wouldn’t believe all the data I’ve collected about the animals on this island! The outdated systems in the Fright Zone are the exact same models as these here, so it was simple to crack into them and analyze the log files. Apparently, one of the last patrols failed to report that they had discovered some ruins near the epicenter before the wildlife ran them out. According to their descriptions, it could be related to the First Ones!” Entrapa wheezes. “Hordak will be thrilled!”

Oh, jeez, right. Scorpia sets her down and awkwardly clears her throat. If Entrapta had any inkling that she was about to receive bad news, her broad grin didn’t show it.

“Ah, about that… A lot of crazy stuff happened since the whole portal fiasco…” Scorpia begins, absently scratching her pincer on Emily when the needy robot rubs against her side and whirs for attention, “Like, we sort of got exiled?” Purple brows furrow.

“That won’t be a problem!” Entrapta replies, expression breaking back into a smile, “I convinced Hordak to spare Catra before, I’m sure I can again! I have plenty of evidence that things are more efficient with you and her in charge.” As if to demonstrate, she pulls the electronic pad from her side and taps the screen to pull up the charts and graphs she’d shown Hordak before.

“Oh, uh, no I don’t think it’ll be… that… easy…” Gosh, this was harder than she thought it was going to be. Enough time passes in silence that the shorter princess looks up and tilts her head in question. A low groan rises behind them, snapping the taut cord that the lack of explanation had wound tight. Debris-ridden pigtails straighten and lift her far over Scorpia’s head to peer at the blankets nestled against the wall of the elevator.

“Who’s that?”

Scorpia bursts.

“I’m so, so, so sorry, Entrapta. I wanted to come look for you, and I should have, but I was waiting for Hordak to ask us to do it. I found out later that Catra had lied and told him that you let the princesses in, and that she was the one that opened the portal. He threw her in prison because he found out, too, and I couldn’t leave to come get you. I never once forgot about you and have been getting a SKIF ready for months! I’ve been a terrible friend. I should have broken Catra out before he tried to kill her, and then she wouldn’t have turned all big and scary and bit his arm off and now she’s sick—” Her pincers come up to block her face, shame and regret blurring in her rambling confession.

Entrapta doesn’t reply for a while. Emily beeps in a tone that might be concern, maybe, she didn’t speak robot. Looking through the gap in her claws, she’s uncertain of what to make of the way the other princess is chewing on her lip. 

“If he wouldn’t send anyone for me… then he thinks I’m dead? Logically, it makes sense. Every documented attempt at settling Beast Island has ended in failure and casualties.” Still, she doesn’t look satisfied with the realization. Entrapta wasn’t good with people, or emotions, or anything that wasn’t mechanical, really, so Scorpia wasn’t sure if she knew how to categorize what she was feeling. Disappointment, maybe? “You said a lot there, it’s going to take me a minute to decipher it all. Hang on.” The recorder makes an appearance again, going back through her entire spiel as Entrapta whips out her notepad. It’s a little embarrassing, if she was honest.

“I found out on the way here from the horde soldier and the goat woman that Catra had been the one who ordered the transport. I didn’t know why, and neither did they. I can’t recall anything that I would have done to upset her enough to warrant that. Then again, it doesn’t really take a lot to upset her according to what I’ve observed and gathered about her behavior. I made a list!” Entrapta wedges the trackerpad behind Scoria’s claws to show her the endlessly scrolling wall of text, “Would you mind verifying these for me while I take notes? Thanks!”

Scorpia fumbles with the pad and squints at it. _Jeez, Adora is on here a lot. _

“Wait, aren’t you… I don’t know, angry?” She tries, following behind Entrapta as she begins to stride off on her hair.

“Angry? Hmmm…” The princess taps her pen against her chin in thought, “Initially, yes, but it’s been a while and I try not to dwell. Besides, people aren’t like bots—their decision making tends to be more layered.” Scorpia’s head reels. She had been expecting to deal with a different person altogether. “I didn’t take it personally.”

The recorder keeps playing on a loop of her confession, pausing occasionally until the princess seems to have taken adequate notes—at one point softly muttering that she would need to get reinforced metal for Hordak’s exoskeleton to “prevent further limb removal”. Scorpia watches as Entrapta goes over to the desk she was sitting at before and rummages through one of the drawers, retrieving a small box and striding over to the bundle on the ground.

“Catra is sick, you said? What are her symptoms?” The musty blanket is peeled back while she talks, causing Scorpia to nervously hover close by to grab her in case Catra tries to lash out.

“U-uh, vomiting, fever, hallucinating I think.” She pauses, “Is turning into a monster a symptom?”

“It could be! Would you elaborate on that, please?” Scorpia must quickly clench the trackerpad in one hand as the recorder to shoved into her other one by a strand of purple hair. 

“Well, she got big… vertical-wise—”

“Estimated height?” She’s pulling back Catra’s eyelids to shine a light against her pupils. They hardly contract. Catra hisses and weakly swats at her but gets thwarted by the hair. This whole process feels jarringly clinical to Scorpia. Then again, it was a very Entrapta way to handle the situation.

“Three-hundred-ish centimeters? A little bigger than She-Ra.”

“Ooh! Fascinating. What else?”

“Her right side was all glitchy and black. Also, her spit burns.” The scab on the side of her neck stings in recollection.

“Really? I’ll get some samples!” Scorpia can’t help but wince when the smaller princess squeezes Catra’s cheeks to open her mouth and swabs it using the small first-aid kit she’d procured from the desk. The _yowl_ that comes out of the feline would have spelled murder if she had any idea what was going on. “And what do you mean by _glitchy_?”

“Yeah, like it was moving and… patchy.”

“Degraded?”

“Yeah! That’s the word I wanted.”

“I’ll have to run some tests and see if I can trigger this state to get some more data, perh—”

“No!” Scorpia shouts, “She wasn’t herself. She attacked Hordak and she attacked me right after. Granted, Hordak was trying to kill her so maybe that’s what set it off, but she’s never done that before, and we’ve been in plenty of life-threatening situations.” Entrapta looks disappointed at hearing this, but otherwise relents after capping the sample in a tube.

“Unfortunately, my experience is exclusively with non-organic material. I have a rudimentary understanding of how the body works. As far as I remember, fevers are technically a good thing. It means that her body is trying to fight off an infection.” She’s already beginning to put away the first aid when Scorpia sputters.

“There isn’t anything we can do? What if she just stays like this?”

“We can try to bring her temperature down to avoid seizures and brain damage.” Scorpia balks at that, “Considering this response has a probability of being related to her transformation, I can’t give a rough estimate of how long it could last.” The room goes quiet besides the squeak of Emily’s leg as she absently uses it to roll herself back and forth. “I got the water pumps working, so you can go in the back and wet some cloth to try and cool her down. In the meantime, I’m going to keep working on trying to get this signal out. The sooner we get back to the mainland, the sooner we can figure out what’s going on.” With an absolutely unaffected smile, Entrapta goes right back to the computer she’d been working from and starts rapidly typing away.

Scorpia doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to truly understand her.

* * *

Catra blinks and finds herself sitting up outside.

The fur on her forehead and wrists is damp, picking up a chill in the heady breeze that manages to squeeze through the suffocating foliage. It’s dark out, but her pupils expand to drink in the pitch. Her shoulders are resting against the warm steel of a decrepit building nature was in the process of reclaiming. She has no idea how she got out here, or even where she was. Her mind is shrouded in fog, obscuring the pieces as she tried to fit them together. Every muscle groans in a full-body ache that only sickness can replicate, anchoring her to the spot as a vulnerable, shivering mess. Sounds of night creatures do not escape her notice, senses still surprisingly sharp while her conscious remains submerged.

There is a familiar itch growing under her skin, an insistent sensation that makes her heart rate spike. It blends with the static that buzzes at her fingertips, focus narrowing to the yawning dark that stretches before her in a tangled mass. It reminds her of something she saw in a dream—or had that really happened?

_Endless. Formless. Infinite._

She wasn’t too sure of anything anymore.

A memory drags her back to Hordak’s lab, vaguely bringing about the mental picture of herself writhing on the ground for air—trying to open her own chest like that would help her breathe. She couldn’t find much else besides that.

An animal’s distant cry echoes, sending everything shifting and moving at once. Like the ground itself was a beast disturbed by the call. A feeling she’s long ignored rises within her like smoke, filling every hollow place and pushing her to her feet. Her gait is unsteady, but the primal urge to chase and to hunt are things she had only ever indulged in before she knew better—before she knew that it would drive others away.

She wasn’t like the rest of them.

_“Control your pet, Adora.” _

Fangs clench in anger, muddled memories nursing a throb that picks up speed to match her pulse and grows hot behind her eyes.

_“You’re a filthy beast, and I won’t allow you bring her down to your level. Adora has a future that extends far beyond your reach.” _

_“If you want to act like an animal, then I’ll train you like one.” _

The buzzing vibrates into numbness. Claws rake uselessly across her right arm, cutting grooves into her fur and bisecting stripes that mat with her own blood. The static moves to her head, blotting out her will to resist the consumption of that dark thing she’d met between realities.

_Predator. _

Catra knows that what is cultivating her hate does not belong there, that her compulsions are foreign. She can’t explain the need to sink her teeth into every living thing that crosses her path, the need to turn the trees black and _alive_ like this thing inside her was. To extend the corruption that was eating her. To hurt the world like it had hurt her. 

She wants to rip something open, bleed it, and watch it rot.

_“Don’t you dare let this happen again. Adora doesn’t need distractions, least of all ones that will only jeopardize and burden her. Control your nature, or I’ll do it for you.” _

Shadow Weaver’s voice is the last thing she wants to recollect upon as her bones shift and crack, painfully pushing against her skin and splitting it apart. Ink spills out instead of blood, slithering up her right side and plunging it into that fractured darkness. Her nerves feel as though they are dipped in acid before they die, a painful sacrifice for a power she wanted to refuse.

Knuckles drag through the grass while her body strains against the change, every shudder drawing out another crack and spasm from under her rolling flesh. She can’t stand being out of control, but she also can’t ignore the whisper that leads her out to the edge of the jungle.

_Servant._

_“Animal. Beast. Pet.” _

_Conquer. _

_Hunt. _

_“Disappointment. Worthless.”_

Catra is full of too many voices pulling her in different directions, yet she always reaches the same destination. Did she ever really have a choice to avoid the thing that she has become?

Black talons plunge into bark, pushing in with little effort and shattering the quiet once more with a groan of wood splintering. Sap oozes out of the wound, thick and sticking between her fingers. Whatever is haunting her spreads its disease into the tree, darkening the sap and withering the leaves. She can feel its roots reaching, an extension of herself as it links with others. The forest will become her eyes.

Perhaps she had misunderstood the portal’s intention before. It was going to erase them, peacefully wipe them from the existence with their final moments being the things they had wanted most. No, that wasn’t right. She _had_ wanted that.

_I just wanted to be happy. _It is a thought she owns that strikes through the haze, only to be buried far below the void that spoke above her.

_Consume. _

Happiness was not something she would ever be granted. Her anger was all that she had left, and she wasn’t going to let it go.

She would destroy them all.

She would tear Adora limb from limb and devour every…

Little.

Piece.

* * *

Scorpia wakes from another nightmare with her neck burning intense enough to make her jaw tighten. She unravels her stiff body from the blanket nest she’d made on the hard floor, a claw reaching over to gently pat the space beside her where she’d let Catra sleep.

It was empty.

“Entrapta!”

“Ahh!” _THUD. _

“Where’s Catra?!” Scorpia scrambles to her feet and throws the blankets aside, fanning it like her friend was going to come flying out if she tried hard enough. Her dark eyes were wild with drowsy panic, searching while Entrapta rubs her head and straightens back up from underneath Emily’s bad leg.

“What do you mean? She’s outside.” The scientist replies in confusion. Scorpia drops the blankets and stares.

“Outside? How did she get outside?!”

“Oh! I let her out. She said she wanted some air, so I had Emily escort her up the elevator. She said she’d come back down when she was feeling better!” Entrapta’s oblivious smile made Scorpia’s stomach sink.

“She can’t be by herself! She can barely walk!” Her pincers fumble over the keypad, desperately punching numbers until the elevator rumbled to life.

“Oh, whoops! She seemed coherent to me. Sorry!” Entrapta calls after her, jogging on her hair to join Scorpia on the way up. “She can’t have gotten far.” She offers, but the larger princess isn’t listening. The ride up is agonizingly slow and torturous. The moment it shutters to a stop the former Force Captain is launching herself out into the Black Night.

“Catra! Catra, where are you?!” She shouts, just to be grabbed around the mouth by a frightened Entrapta.

“Shh! You’ll draw in predators!” She whispers. As though reading from a script, a distant, thunderous roar shakes the ground in reply.

Scorpia wrenches herself away and begins to search all around the building—quietly this time. Kicking over rocks and debris, she’s in the middle of shoving over a large piece of paneling that had fallen from the roof when strands of purple hair tap her on the shoulder. She doesn’t pause to meet Entrapta at the tree line, about to ask what she had found when she shines the light on the tree the scientist was crouched in front of. She was picking black, rotten bark with tweezers and putting it into a baggy. 

A similar effect was happening on the trees close by, even the grass around their trunks starting to darken and curl.

“Incredible! It appears that the tree is corroding or infected by something parasitic. Do you think Catra did this?” Entrapta squeals. Scorpia feels a jagged stab of pain on her neck, and when she clutches it, she notices that the scab is larger. There’s more blood. 

“I think… I think something really bad is going to happen if we don’t get her back.” The larger woman whispers. Noticing the expression on her face, Entrapta sobers up. Rising to her feet, she nods and begins to usher the dazed Scorpia back toward the depot.

“I’ll get that distress signal working. Someone will come and we’ll figure this out.”

Entrapta sounds so sure, but Scorpia tastes the bitter dread welling up in her stomach.

_Servant. _


	7. Aposematism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAWD i had a rough week. forgive me for the wait for this update. It's a long, mostly transitory one, but the fun is about to start. thanks for much for all the kind words and comments!! 
> 
> im ngl i love character analyzing Adora. i v much believe that she is hiding a lot of how she feels and is not as fine or oblivious as she acts.

The flight to Beast Island is, fortunately, uneventful. Much to Adora’s surprise, Swift Wind is faster than any skiff she’d ever been on. She isn’t sure if it’s because of the enhancements given to him upon his transformation, or if her perception of their speed had been exaggerated from the Horde’s perspective.

Regardless, she was thankful for Swift Wind’s endless desire to use his newfound voice as often as possible. It was a nice distraction, and the horse was a genuinely good-natured soul that wanted to extend his aid to any willing to accept it. That was especially true for offering a reassuring pep talk to Bow and herself when it was clear that they were sharing a dark cloud. The meeting with Glimmer about this rescue mission had gone over well, yet the two of them were really feeling her absence.

“Ooh! Too bad this place is full of vicious, wild animals that wanna eat everything in sight; this is a nice beach!” Swift Wind remarks when his hooves touch down in the sand. He leaves star-covered prints in his wake as he trots further from the creeping line of the ocean, folding his wings so that the two of them could dismount. Wind whips across their backs, hot and electric as a storm brews in the rolling, black sky. They had maybe an hour before the rain started to come down.

Bow retrieves his tracker pad from his bag and the screen flickers to life. There is a sullen pull to his shoulders, a frown turning down the corners of his mouth. Adora feels much the same, she only hopes that she does a better job at hiding it.

“Okay, good, we’re still picking up the distress signal. It’s just up ahead.” Bow takes a moment to look up into the dense cluster of trees, “Right through that very foreboding, very dangerous jungle…” He swallows audibly, his anxiety infecting both Adora and Swift Wind.

Adora feels the hair along the back of her neck prickle, arms flushing with goosebumps as something shakes the treetops and sends a flock of birds into the air some distance away. It’s not difficult to recall the legends of She-Ra taming the ferocious animals of Beast Island. It is difficult, however, for her to conceptualize such a task. Not even the Horde, with all their weapons and man-power, could set up a single fuel depot without it being overrun after just a few weeks. She’s only just gotten a grip on healing and hasn’t had any other instance to use it, let alone exercise her other potential abilities.

The sword of protection hums against her spine, singing a warning into the tight network of her muscles. She listens for the indecipherable words it breathes across her mind, feeling a twinge of annoyance at how much more insistent they had become. Making sense of it is something she has stopped doing days ago, despite the plague they infect upon her sleep.

“Something isn’t right, guys. Let’s be on our guard.” Adora advises.

“I feel it, too.” Swift Wind agrees, hooves digging trenches into the grainy shore. “My danger sense is infallible.”

“Is it because you’re a horse?” Bow teases with a smirk.

“Absolutely. Horses are highly attuned to any possible threat. Is that stick we see on the road every day different all the sudden? Probably a trap, shouldn’t go near it.” The alicorn replies with such a grave tone that Bow chortles. Adora doesn’t quite understand why it’s funny, but knows from experience that it’s better not to ask. To her, Swift Wind had a point. “I’m also She-Ra’s steed, so I can sense other stuff, too. It takes me a little bit to make sense of it.” 

“Seriously, though, what do you mean?” Bow asks, looking between the two of them.

“It’s just a feeling I get from the sword—like something bad is going to happen.” Adora responds as she unsheathes the weapon. The metal glows in the fading daylight, reflecting her furrowed brows and wide eyes. It’s a hefty weight in her hands—energy spiking up into her arms upon contact. Muscles flex in preparation, the magic from the runestone forking out from her chest and heating her skin. She takes a deep breath and raises the blade over her head.

“For the honor of Greyskull.”

* * *

Adora hesitates at the entrance to the war room. She’d taken the lead in a state of manic overconfidence, one audibly shattered by an undignified yelp when Bow collides with her back—clearly having been following much too close.

“What? What is it?” Bow squeaks, eyes darting around to betray how wound up he was. She wasn’t fairing much better.

“Nothing! I’m thinking.” Adora says too quickly, attempting to maintain her façade and beat back the anxious hounds that nip at her insides.

Truth was, she’d had this all planned out—as she was apt to do in situations she could not ‘wing.’ Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say. They’d practiced for what felt like hours on how to tell Glimmer that they were going to investigate the distress signal from Beast Island without her. Holding out for the best possible reaction, they’d reasoned that she would likely be upset, but ultimately understand.

Swallowing down the thick ball that had appeared in her throat, Adora forces her arms to raise up and move to the door handles.

“What if she starts to cry and thinks we’re leaving her behind?” She balks suddenly, flinching back as though burned.

“Don’t say that!” Bow hisses, hands braced on her shoulders. She can feel the quiver in his touch and hear the lilt of nerves in his voice.

“What if we think we’re being good friends, but we’re actually being terrible?” Adora’s blood runs cold at the thought, parroting the young man behind her as he lets out a distressed whimper.

“Adora, breathe! Remember what Perfuma said! No more negative energy.” Perfuma had assisted in their rebellion recruitment project by teaching “meditation” some months prior. They were still practicing the concept and had thought it useful for their current situation when it came time to discuss a plan of action. She is coaxed into some breathing exercises but doesn’t get five seconds in before throwing up her hands in frustration.

“It’s not working! You go first.” Before he can protest, she’s snaking around behind him and giving him a push.

“What?! Me? You’re the protector of Etheria!” Bow cries, voice hoarse and breaking. Digging his boots into the polished, marble floor isn’t helping him against Adora’s strength.

“Wait, do you… do you think this would be easier if I was She-Ra?” She is already reaching for the sword strapped to her back when Bow whips around to grab her wrist.

“Why would that make it easier?!”

“I don’t know! Being She-Ra makes everything easier!”

“I think you are starting to develop a problem, Adora.”

“Yeah? What? Turning into She-Ra whenever I run out of ideas and hope it fixes everything?” It’s ridiculous, she knows it is, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to placate her lack of tolerance for problems she couldn’t punch a solution into. 

“Yes!”

“Well, she _can_, according to every legend I hear.” She’s obviously bitter about her short-comings as the new She-Ra.

Bow groans, “Come on! We practiced this loads of times, she’ll understand—even if it’s not right away.”

“I don’t know, Bow, I can’t risk losing ano—” The doors swing open and the pair freeze. A wince crawls up along Adora’s features, pinching them as she turns to face her friend.

Except that it isn’t her friend at all.

“Adora,” Shadow Weaver’s fingers are pressed together in their usual position of rest. Her tone is admonishing, like she’d caught her stealing ration bars from the kitchen after curfew. It is gentle, though, softer around concealed edges that other cadets hadn’t been special enough to avoid. It had never stopped Adora from treading lightly around her—poised for the moment she reached out and was met with a sharp point. “What can I do for you?”

The blonde bristles at her voice alone, feeling caught between its sticky-sweet texture. Coercive and fine like a spider’s web, warm like home and honey. The crooked end of a shepherd’s hook that has guided her through life. Internally, she wars with the instincts to obey, to flee, to fight. It’s not a struggle she allows to rise onto her face, expression controlled and hardening. The difficulty of staying imperceptible shows in the cautious glances she casts to the creeping shadows that lick at the toes of her boots.

She doesn’t miss the way the sorceress fails to acknowledge Bow, and it puts solid ground back under her feet as she straightens up. Her height had crawled up an inch or so in the last six months, nearly putting her at eye level with the woman across from her. It’s an edge she’s happy to take advantage of when she’s feeling so small.

“We’re here to speak to the Queen.”

“Did you schedule this meeting?” Shadow Weaver tilts her head, mask still cracked and bisected with a deep fissure. The question pisses Adora off. Visibly grinding her teeth, her hands curl into fists and squeeze until her knuckles pale. Of course, she would still fucking treat her like a child. 

Bow senses the palpable tension, placing a cool hand back on her shoulder in comfort. It snaps Adora out of her glower, shaking her head as the archer steps up and offers an amicable smile.

“Yes, she knows we were coming.” His answer pulls that unnervingly white gaze toward him. The grip on her shoulder tightens a fraction, yet his outward appearance remains even.

“Very well, then. I’ll let her know you’ve arrived.” And just like that, Shadow Weaver turns her back to them and lets them inside.

Adora is hesitant to follow close behind, given that the air she left in her wake was unsettling and cold. Blue eyes warily watch the slithering column of black hair, briefly catching a glimpse of the back of her neck. Her skin is corpse-gray, cut through with fleshy scars that connect and branch like swollen veins. Conjuring the image of what parts of her face she’d seen between the cracks of her fingers all those years ago is too easy, drawing a shiver up her spine and a quake to her knees.

The slender form of Shadow Weaver is a hard contrast to the delicate pinks and pastels of Bright Moon, drawing attention to wherever she lurks—much like the way a poisonous animal bore bright colors to warn of the deadly consequence that came with interaction. It didn’t help that she’s made little to no effort to conform to the unspoken standard, like she wants everyone to be afraid of her. A dwindling part of her psyche wishes that she would try to be more approachable, that she would show everyone why Adora had decided to save her. She’d defected from the horde, so she couldn’t be all bad, right? Anyone could change.

She had to believe that.

The pressure of Bow’s grip is reassuring this time, but the thankful smile that passes across her face is fleeting. Walking further into the room, Adora can’t help but inspect it for changes, a piece of her wedged tight into the belief that Shadow Weaver couldn’t be trusted. She asserts her influence on anyone she thinks she can control, and the idea of allowing her to worm her way into the gap left by Glimmer’s mother made her ill.

The room was largely untouched save for the way the table had been shuffled to the side. The lack of horde activity had made this place gather some dust, but it seems as though Glimmer and Shadow Weaver have been utilizing it for something. A waist-high pot has been rolled into the chamber, filled to the brim with clear water from the lake below. The queen is standing before it, arms crossed and expression teetering between bored and ablaze with irritation. Her entire posture shifts into one of delight upon seeing Bow and herself enter behind the sorceress.

“Bow! Adora!” She rushes to them, throwing her arms around their waists in a group hug that the two immediately surrender to. “Please tell me you’re here to rescue me.” There is a desperate sarcasm to her tone, one that causes Adora to bristle and shoot and icy glare at the masked specter in their midst.

“You must be the most impatient queen I’ve ever met.” Shadow Weaver remarks. It’s so hard for Adora not to hear a condescending air hidden in her commentary. If there is any, Glimmer either doesn’t care or doesn’t notice.

“All you’ve been showing me are stupid tricks! You said my power was great, so why am I not _doing_ anything great?” The queen sasses, turning to face the old woman with her hands on her hips. The chuckle that leaves Shadow Weaver is one that makes Adora’s stomach clench, and she can’t help but think of how quickly Catra would have been on the floor with a bleeding mouth for saying something like that.

“You are more like your father than you may ever realize,” She floats closer, but diverts her path to venture near the pot, instead, “Patience, you majesty, first you must learn to understand your limits in order to go beyond them. You can’t do that when you’re always skipping practice to go on _adventures_.”

“I’m ready for more!” Glimmer huffs, ever defiant. Adora’s head is reeling from this conversation, brows furrowing in confusion and a growing unease. Had she really not noticed how much time her friend had been spending with this woman? Should she trust Shadow Weaver’s decision and Glimmer’s judgement?

“Then when your meeting has concluded, we can move on to new material.” Shadow Weaver goes quiet after that, though her gaze lingers much too long on Adora’s as she hovers out of the room to give the group some privacy.

This doesn’t feel right.

“Anyway,” The queen begins with a roll of her eyes, turning back to her friends with a wide smile, “What’s up? Here to tell me about all the weird and crazy stuff you guys have been seeing out there?” Neither of them miss her pout, “I wish I could come with you. There always crap to do around here. Paperwork, payroll—”

“Ew,” interjects Bow, earning a giggle from his childhood friend before he continues, “We confirmed that what Entrapta said about anomalies appearing when the portal opened is true. So far, they’re pretty minor. I’ve been trying to figure out how to detect an energy signature from them.” He rubs his chin in thought. “We’ve responded to every distress call we’ve gotten except for one since we fixed the interference…” He trails off now, looking to Adora for some help.

“Okay, where is it coming from? I can totally skip this lesson and free up my afternoon to tag along!” She looks so ecstatic that Adora winces.

“It’s… coming from Beast Island.” Bow says, his tone sullen at the implication. They know it takes at least a day to get there, let alone how long it’s going to take them to solve whatever the problem was and get back. Beast Island wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, and their plans had the consistently nasty habit of falling apart in the worst of ways.

“You’re not… seriously going to Beast Island, are you? There’s no way I’m authorizing that—what if we lose you both?” Glimmer looks between them, her voice wavering.

“If someone is in trouble we have to go check it out. We might even find out that everything we know about the island is wrong—just like the Crimson Waste.” Adora can see the way her friend’s eyes are starting to glisten as she steps in. The three rarely ever spend time apart, save for errands and small issues, and proposing to go somewhere without Glimmer felt like it was going to take its toll. Bow attending princess prom (a mutual event) with someone else had been enough for her to fear the deterioration of their friendship. This?

Glimmer rubs her arm as she deflates, body language screaming that she was trying her best not to give in to the desire to fall back on irrational fears. Anxiety spiking, Adora reaches out and takes the queen’s face in her hands, directing her downcast gaze back up to her eyes.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can, but we can’t let this go. It’s too strange, and anything we can find out about the anomalies will help us get closer to fixing things.” She surprises herself with how calm and resolute she sounds, hoping that her gentle strength will pass to her friend through her touch. 

“How will I know you’re okay?” There is a lot of weight to that question, given that Glimmer has been forced into shoes she was not ready to fill. “I can’t lose anyone else.” The tears well up, and Adora feels sadness pulling her towards the temptation of guilt. It would be simple to call it off to ease the mind of her friend, but something inside was guiding her to whatever was happening on Beast Island.

“You won’t. I promise, Glimmer, we’ll be careful.” Bow chimes in, having stepped behind the queen to put his arms around her for a hug. Adora moves in from the front, sandwiching Glimmer between their bodies. “We can’t properly improvise without the whole best friend squad there, anyway.” He adds, bringing smiles to their faces.

“Perhaps I can help.” Adora doesn’t get to concur before Shadow Weaver’s voice interrupts them. She can’t stop the way her arms snap back down to her sides, feeling that disapproving gaze lingering on her for the blatant show of affection and intimacy. She’d never been allowed this kind of relationship with Catra.

“Do you _mind_, you eavesdropping creep?” Glimmer bites, freeing herself from the comforting hold of her friends to march across the room and jab a finger right into Shadow Weaver’s chest. “Don’t think you can just barge into wherever you want because you are training me. I’m still the queen, and you don’t hold any position in my court.” The scathing words don’t seem to have an immediate effect on the sorceress, though Adora catches the subtle, agitated frizzing of her hair before it settles.

“Forgive me, I overheard your dilemma and wanted to offer my guidance. If you wish, your next lesson can be on scrying. It will allow you to keep tabs on your friends and give us locations we need in order to come to their aid. The teleportation spell is still intact beneath the runestone and can be utilized whenever you see fit.” The old woman explains, a hint of annoyance slowing her speech. Glimmer narrows her eyes. “Scrying, however, takes dedication. You can’t skip lessons if this is what you want to learn.”

“Is scrying something I can do _without_ you?” Shadow Weaver’s expression is impossible to read behind her mask.

“Once you take the time to master it, yes.” Silence blankets them. Adora finds it suffocating for a multitude of reasons.

“Ugh, fine, but don’t make ‘overhearing’ my conversations a habit.” Glimmer’s expression immediately softens upon turning back to Adora and Bow, though there is a stiffness to her movement as she takes a deep breath. “I can’t physically stop you, and let’s be real, I’d totally go if I could leave for a few days. Just promise me you’ll both be extra, extra careful, okay?” She takes each one of their hands and gives them a plaintive squeeze. “The rebellion needs you guys, and I do, too.”

“Of course! We promise.” Bow answers for them, eyes watery as he throws his arms back around her neck. Adora passes a wary look over to the large pot in the room, imagining Shadow Weaver and Glimmer watching their every move on the surface of the water. No, it wasn’t the act itself that bothered her, but more of the fact that they would be spending more time together. It sits wrong in her gut, heavy and awkward as she shuffles from foot to foot. Still, she was working on trusting her friends and clinging to the hope that Shadow Weaver was changing, so she forces down the warnings that want to escape her throat.

“When are you leaving?” Glimmer asks, shaking her from her doubtful thoughts.

“In a day or two, I want enough time to prepare supplies. Swift Wind volunteered to take us, so it’ll be faster than if we borrowed Sea Hawk’s boat.” Adora thinks that that is a bit of good news, at least.

“Alright, well let’s have a sleepover the night before you leave. It’s been forever since we’ve had one of those.” Bow looks ecstatic at the queen’s suggestion, and even Adora can’t fight back the grin that grows on her face despite the looming shadow ardently watching them.

* * *

“What do you think did those?” Swift Wind asks, cautiously approaching the grooves left in the wall of the overgrown depot, “More importantly, how much bigger than my entire body do you think it’s paw is?”

“Not helping, Swifty.”

“Right, sorry, I’m a nervous talker. Also, those trees over there are really creeping me out.” The vibrant plumage of his wing extends, gesturing to a part of the tree line that is unnaturally dark. Bow doesn’t get too close when he peers at them, expression twisting.

“They look like they’re… rotting.” He leans a little closer, “Or not? I’m not really sure what’s going on.”

“Don’t get too close, Bow.”

There are five cavernous holes in the black, swollen bark. Ink-colored sap is bursting from the seams, dribbling down to the base where the grass bears a resemblance to its affliction. The ground dips into a hole steep enough to expose the nonwoody roots, which thread and twist into an infectious network that looks to be spreading to other foliage. A lack of disturbance with the soil tells her that it wasn’t dug up. It was just… gone. As though it had never existed in the first place.

“I don’t like this. Let’s get inside the depot and see who is sending the signal.” She-Ra says, feeling a ripple of unease flush across her arms. The wind picks up, and cold raindrops begin to fall.

“Sounds good to me!” Swift Wind calls as he dips under the sheet of metal that was once a garage door.

Half an hour rolls by before she manages to get the cover off the panel on the wall to allow Bow to hack into the elevator’s controls. All of them are tense on the long ride down beneath the depot. She-Ra can’t help but continually rotate the sword of power in her hands, attempting to distract herself from the anxious pawing of Swift Wind’s hooves.

She-Ra readies her weapon when the sound of voices begins to drift up through the shaft, bouncing off the walls in frantic echoes. The metal creaks and groans, rusted gears grinding to a slow halt as it reaches the bottom.

The abrupt silence when the elevator locks into place is deafening.

“Wait, aren’t they from…?” Swift Wind doesn’t get to finish his question as Bow and She-Ra screech at the two figures that have stopped dead to stare at them.

“It was a trap!” She-Ra cries, launching herself from the elevator to swing her sword above her head in an arch. Scorpia and Entrapta both shout in alarm and scatter in opposite directions. Poor Emily barely gets off a shot from her blaster to interrupt the warrior princess’s trajectory, cushioning the blow she takes to her hull. The blade cleaves into the drone and gets temporarily stuck, causing a whir of beeping from Emily and a wail from Entrapta—who forsakes her own safety to rush forward and drape herself over her bot.

“Don’t hurt her! It's not a trap!” She says quickly, drawing a look of confusion from She-Ra as Bow shoots a goo arrow right onto the end of Scorpia’s jabbing tail. Swift Wind has jumped past Bow, body twisting and muscles tensing in preparation to attack while she's incapacitated to some degree.

“Oh, gross! Not cool, man!” Scorpia backs away to try and pick off the substance with her claws, turning her head to notice that the fighting was apparently short-lived.

Both Bow and Swift Wind hesitate when they see She-Ra halt, the horse stumbling to end a kick aimed right for Scorpia’s side. The awkward sound he makes when his legs tangle and his hind quarters wind up on the floor is enough to give everyone pause.

“What do you mean this isn’t a trap?” She-Ra hisses, wrenching the sword free of Emily and getting a tiny pang of regret when the drone boops sadly.

“It’s convenient that it’s you two out here sending a signal from the most dangerous place on Etheria.” Bow chimes in, keeping the string taught and his aim true. Scorpia holds up her pincers in surrender.

“I’ve been sending the SOS for months. Scorpia and Catra got here about five, no six, days ago. Or was it four…” Entrapta trails off, reaching for her note pad to flip through the pages.

“Catra is here?” The venom in She-Ra’s tone pulls everyone’s attention, “Where is she?” Her posture switches into a defensive stance, too-blue eyes scoring the ceiling for a familiar shadow waiting to ambush.

“That’s a good question! She wandered off into the jungle two days ago in a feverish state. Well, actually, when she said she wanted to go outside for fresh air I checked her temperature, and everything was normal.” Entrapta responds, gaze alight with excitement, “It’s good that you’re here! Scorpia says she turned into a monster and attacked Hordak, but I didn’t get to get a blood sample from her to study before she left. You could help us get her back so I can run more tests!”

“Entrapta! Don’t tell them _everything_! We can’t trust that they won’t hurt her!” Scorpia pleads, unable to move due to Bow’s arrow staying trained on her. She-Ra whips around with a snarl curled on her lip, absolutely appalled by the assumption that she would blindly cut down Catra. Inside, she falters. Isn’t that what she had promised to do?

“Scorpia and I tried to follow her trail, but the animals have become more aggressive than usual since Catra left. I have a feeling she’s somehow disturbing the delicate ecosystem of the island.” Entrapta bounces her pen in her palm, beginning to lead Emily over to a workbench off to the side and ignoring the sword that had been leveled at her face.

“That’s… This is a lot to take in,” Bow sounds as though he’s having a headache just voicing the struggle, “Catra is a monster? Disturbing the ecosystem? What are you _talking_ about?”

“Scorpia can explain better than I can since she was there. I’m going to work on fixing this hole in Emily. Don’t worry, I’m listening!” All eyes turn to the princess in question.

“And people were upset about a talking horse…” Mutters Swift Wind under his breath while Bow lowers his weapon and She-Ra approaches Scorpia.

“Don’t you dare try to lie to me. Tell me everything.” There is a dangerous edge to She-Ra’s voice as she towers over the other princess. A desperate war between anger, concern, and uncertainty is pulling her into pieces. It’s been months since she’s even heard Catra’s name. Her resolution inside the portal hadn’t changed, but could she cut down her old friend when something was wrong with her? Scorpia slides back a step to escape the shadow that had fallen, visibly torn as to what she should do.

“Please, you can’t hurt her, she’s not herself.” Scorpia pleads. It makes her gut churn.

“I—I can’t promise you anything.” It’s the safest response she can come up with right now. She turns away from that open vulnerability, choosing instead to focus on the sword as a warm glow envelops her. Adora stands there in her place, grip staying tight while she waits. Bow and Swift Wind flank her, though she’s only distantly grateful for their presence. Her mind is trapped on Catra, emotions passing from hand to hand with nary a pause to examine the texture. 

“This is going to sound nuts, but it’s true. Entrapta is right, too—we could use your help getting her back.” Scorpia slumps in defeat, plopping her large body down onto a nearby box to put her face in her hands.

The tale she weaves makes Adora sick. 


	8. Tyger, Tyger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for some p descriptive gore in this one. 
> 
> Also SEASON 4 HELLO??? CATRA HONEY CALM DOWN
> 
> It doesn't need to be said but for posterity i will post it and add to the tags: post season 3 alt. storyline  
we are embellishing lots of lore and world info folks. anything found out in season 4 likely won't apply unless it fits with what i already came up with
> 
> the woes of writing something before the show is finished T_T
> 
> anyway, enjoy!

“Adora! Adora, wait!”

Adora roughly shoulders Bow out of the way and dips under the curling metal of the garage door. It has accumulated rain in the hours they’ve spent belowground, dribbling off into deep puddles that soak their boots.

“You are not coming with me, Bow.” Adora doesn’t seem to be bothered by the pelting rain, even as it mats down her hair and begins to drench her clothes.

“You can’t go out there by yourself. How can we trust that what they’re saying is even the truth?” Bow catches up, wrenching her around to face him by grabbing her upper arm. The hold is unrelenting, disallowing her to go closer to the tree line she was marching toward moments ago.

“Catra is dangerous!” She rethinks that statement with a harsh shake of her head, “_Normal_ Catra is dangerous, who knows what she’s capable of now! I can’t risk you, or anyone else’s safety because of her. I won’t make the same mistake again.” Her mind frantically tries to mesh together the information she’s gotten from Scorpia, flashing back to the encounter with Catra inside the wormhole.

_“You made me this.”_

The whispering from the sword has grown into an overwhelming roar of static, crashing ocean waves that batter her thoughts and erode them. “The sword—” She blurts suddenly, “The sword’s been trying to tell me something. It’s only gotten louder since we landed, but I don’t understand it. I know this has to do with whatever happened to Catra.”

“We promised Glimmer we wouldn’t take any unnecessary risks and going out into an untamed jungle with no idea where she is sounds like an unnecessary risk! Especially alone. She’s not the only thing out there that poses a threat!” Bow isn’t letting her go, his voice strained with the effort of keeping Adora locked in place. They’re both strong, but Adora can bet that she is stronger.

“What happens if we leave? We take Scorpia and Entrapta off the island and they get imprisoned in Bright Moon, then what? Catra continues just… just poisoning the land? We need to find out what she’s doing, Bow! If Scorpia is right and she’s not in control of herself I can’t… I can’t let her suffer.” Her throat tightens while her stomach drops to her feet. Catra, no matter the war that has torn them apart, meant everything to her. She had best friends now, yes, but it wasn’t the same. What she had with her childhood companion was well beyond friendship—a bond even deeper than family.

She dared not give such desperation a name.

“I have to fix this.” Her voice is softer, tinged with regret and fear. Bow stares at her face, the rain rolling off the tight curls of his hair and his dark eyelashes. Lightning cracks the sky and rumbles the soil beneath their feet, the thunder punching through their ears.

“How?” He asks, his grip going slack and his tone defeated.

“I don’t—I don’t know, Bow. But I can’t just sit here. I can’t leave her, not again. She needs me.” She brandishes the blade with her free hand. Even in the gloom of the storm, it glows with an eerie power, “She-Ra can heal. She saved Shadow Weaver, so what says she can’t heal Catra, too?”

“Are you sure about this?” Bow briefly looks to the black trees, “How long should we wait before we come find you?” Another growl of thunder gives her time to think about her answer.

“Five days. If I’m not back by then, have Swift Wind find me. He’ll be able to sense where I am.” Her words are decisive even as her guts tangle into a nauseating, anxious heap. Bow chokes on his next inhale at her response.

“Five whole days? Glimmer is going to kill us for being gone that long! What about two?”

“It’s going to probably take me two just to get to where Entrapta _thinks _Catra is. I added in an extra day to find her and bring her back.” Here’s to hoping that Catra pulls her usual and shows herself quickly. “Please, trust me on this. I can’t let anything happen to any of you. It’s too dangerous out there.” She doesn’t chance a comforting touch that would betray the way she’s trembling with a mix of dread and anticipation. Still, she doesn’t get a choice in the matter when her friend hugs her close. A deep fear burrows into her chest as she embraces him in return, holding tight just in case it’s the last time.

“I trust you, Adora. You better be careful.” The archer draws back with a warm steel in his gaze. It chases some of the cold that is trying to change her mind.

“I will. You and Swift Wind keep an eye on Scorpia and Entrapta to make sure they don’t call any Horde reinforcements. This could still be a trap.” Part of her _wants_ this endeavor to be that simple. Catra would ambush her in the woods, they would fight, and things would be so run-of-the-mill that she would feel silly for ever believing their lies.

This still had the potential to be everything but the nightmare it was turning out to be.

* * *

The rain throws a wrench into her travel plans. The night is already dark, but the cloud cover makes it worse. More than once she nearly walks into a trench that seems to have opened up out of nowhere, leading straight down into a web of gnarled black roots. Following the trail of rotten trees had been an ambitious idea, because whatever was happening to them was spreading a lot faster than she originally thought. Not wanting to risk a twisted ankle in a jungle full of angry predators, she reluctantly peels off to forge her own path.

South-west is where the center of the island lay—and where the largest, most fierce creatures had claimed their territories. Entrapta theorized that that must be where the resources were plentiful, as well as the supposed First Ones ruin that the Horde had mentioned in their logs.

Judging from the squelch of her boots in the mud and how long the rain has been coming down, Adora assumes that it would be far too wet to make camp anywhere in the open. She needs a place to get out of the storm. Shining the flashlight onto the jungle floor, she crouches to examine the elevation by the flow of the water. If she can find somewhere high up, there might be cliffs or outcrops she could use for cover. Or, a place where the trees thinned would be a good setup for a lean-to.

The harsh sound of the storm rumbles and cracks above her head, wind chilling her soaked clothes as it hisses through the trees. Her hair sags from its ponytail, soon forcing her to pull it free so that she could scoop it behind her ears.

The sword sheds a dim cyan glow at her side, gripped tightly in her hand while she sweeps the beam of light over the amorphous shapes of the jungle. The definition they take upon exposure constantly makes her jump, mistaking unfamiliar colors and features for eyes, teeth, or hands.

When the light is cast upon the trail of infection, the void seems to draw it in and reject reflection. The trees and grass stay vague around the edges, stacking into one black, continuous form with the way the foliage layers itself to compete for space. 

Adora walks for some time, pausing to listen to the quiet sounds of animal life pass her by when the sword sends an electric warning tingling into her fingers. They are hulking shadows in the dark, slinking by to look for prey that was not accompanied by a corona of whirring, blue magic. Their eyes refract in that wild way, whole and eerie like a moon, much like Catra’s did. Whatever had spooked them must still be affecting them, because more than once Adora finds it too easy to chase them away with shouts and charges—even with their severe difference in size.

She doesn’t like this, and the sooner it is over, the better.

She cannot look for Catra in the rain, given that the signs were often muddled or washed away. She would have to settle for looking in the morning.

Adora walks until she feels the incline and finds the beginnings of a cliffside. It looms like a giant in the dark that gives the wind a voice. The storm is louder against the rocks, the air whistling and moaning through tight colonies of stone and plant-life. A shiver moves through her cold body, and her eyes spot the yawning mouth of an opening that could be a shallow cave. Carefully climbing the two-meter distance to its edge, she pulls herself inside and is relieved that its positioning has guarded it from becoming flooded.

The cave is shallow like she’d hoped, with an entrance that is three and a half meters high and a depth of five. A _cozy_ place to spend the night where she won’t have to worry about anything at her back.

Keeping the sword in her lap, her mind swims with dissonant voices. The gentle intrusion of the blade’s power runs through her nerves, bolstering her awareness and durability. It’s nothing compared to when she’s She-Ra, but the passive bonuses are a nice touch. Clicking off the flashlight and setting it down beside her, she scoots back in the dirt until her shoulders are pressed against the uneven surface of the wall so that she is facing the entrance.

Shadows bend and snap with the crack of lightning and thunder, the rain keeping a steady white-noise that does little to lure her into treacherous relaxation. She knows she won’t be moving any further tonight and that she should rest, but it’s hard to do so when the tongues of hungry beasts lap at her heels.

Gaze wide and alert, she stares out into the night as an arc of lightning forks into jagged rows of teeth across the sky. The brief flash of white gives her enough time to spot a both familiar and unfamiliar shape on the lip of the cave entrance from above.

It’s a hand, clawed and dark and void like the infected trees. Air is sucked into her lungs as her grip on the pommel becomes painful. She’s frozen, trying to regulate her breathing in case whatever is lurking hasn’t noticed her yet.

The appendage doesn’t move, but a whisper drifts through the dark,

_Herald Of Light._

A distorted purr is nearly swallowed by the roar of thunder.

Adora shakes her head, unable to stand with the pressure swelling inside of her skull.

_Will You Stay Your Hand? _

_Or Will You Embrace Your Blade To Take That Which Has Forsaken You?_

Adora opens her mouth to reply, but instead finds herself jerking her chin off her chest and blinking into the harsh, gray morning. There’s a painful crick in her neck and the rain has stopped. The air smells warm and wet.

“Wha—?” A dream? She can’t’ remember falling asleep. Her eyes dart to the spot where the hand was with her sword at the ready. There is nothing there.

Suppressing a shudder, she groggily pushes herself up. The words from her dream are already starting to fade, though its implications linger to prey upon her insecurity—tearing at a festering wound and spilling the blood fresh through her veins. What would she see when she found Catra? Would she be able to do what she promised Glimmer? 

What would she give to save the pieces of Catra she thought she knew? 

* * *

Reorienting herself as she drops down from the lip of the cave and into ankle-deep puddles of mud, Adora sets back out to locate the center of the island. Finding some sign of Catra isn’t difficult, as the more she draws near, the angrier the wildlife becomes. Fending off some strange panther-like thing with tusks and spines, she is left plucking a few quills from her leg just as another creature drops from the trees onto her shoulders. It shrieks and bites and claws at her loose hair, making blood well up on her scalp. Throwing it to the ground, her heel delivers a vicious stomp to its gut that sends it running.

Panting, she twists the sword to point it at the next animal that comes lumbering from the trees. There is a snarl on its black lips, inky liquid dripping from its twitching maw. Darkness creeps over its chin and into its mouth, disappearing beneath its jaw. It takes another step and sways, bear-like in its bulk and shape. There is something trailing beneath it, and before she can lunge it falls onto its side—heaving in labored breaths that she mistook for aggression.

Tentatively she moves closer, reeling at the gaping wound in its torso. It’s been gored open, flayed from throat to hindquarters and left to spill its guts on the ground. Her arm instinctively moves up to cover her nose, anticipating a stench delayed by the moisture in the air, but there is no smell from its black insides. She doesn’t want to, yet her boot slides through the mud to get a closer look.

Its ribs are an empty cage, protecting hardly a thing as few organs remained intact. Everything is covered in that disconcerting void. “It’s infected just like the trees…” She murmurs to herself, avoiding the urge to touch the frayed, splintering edges of its open gut. Her stomach churns as it sucks in another breath, watching its lungs shakily expand. How is it still alive?

And how fresh was this fatal injury?

Looking at the trail behind it, she feels the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The inky streak of gore it had left in its wake is still glistening in the daylight. Grey-blue eyes snap to the tree line it appeared from, watching warily for what had attacked it.

Seconds tick into minutes, bathed in the quiet, early sounds of the jungle rife with hungry predators.

All is still.

Adora’s muscles stay tense and ready as she edges back from the dying animal, pausing to pass it a sympathetic look. She wants to put it out of its misery but also doesn’t need to find out the hard way how that substance is spreading. Resisting the urge to be impulsive as another wet, shuddering breath breaks the eerie quiet, she forces herself to turn away. This sensation is familiar, a guilty hole that widens to encompass something else she’d abandoned to suffer for her own good.

_It’s not the same. You’re not responsible._

Adora tells herself this as often as she can, yet the doubt slips through the cracks. She’s already damaged herself by trying to contain the responsibility of everyone’s actions. She doesn’t have any more room left for blame.

Steeling her nerves, she shuts out the weakened gasps of the animal and starts to head back in the right direction.

* * *

By the time she reaches the village she’s beat to hell and exhausted.

Adora has been walking all day, dodging creatures and fighting her way deeper and deeper into the island’s core. The ration bars she’d packed from the depot are stale and do their job, her water having run dry some hour or so ago. The injury from the quills earlier in the day have swelled and given her a limp. Her jacket has been shredded and discarded due to its tattered state and the growing heat of the day. She’s given up on trying to keep her hair out of her eyes and has settled for letting it be caked back with mud and sweat.

Filthy as she is, her entire body receives a pulse of energy from the sword when she sees the solid shape of a stone wall break through the unending line of trees. With cautiousness she approaches, blade ready when she steps out from cover. 

The jungle has grown back from where it had been cut away to make room for this place. The stone, piled about six meters high, has been punctured and pulled apart by vines. The soil at the base is churned up and uneven with root systems breaking through the perimeter. She recalls Entrapta telling her to be on the lookout for First Ones ruins in her search, but she wasn’t expecting anything like this.

Following along the wall, careful of where she stepped, she finds a gate that certainly resembles First Ones tech. It is just the frame of it sagging against the rock, metal forged into elaborate and interwoven symbols that have become lethal points upon its collapse. Wiring is exposed and dead, covered in dirt and rust. She imagines that it must have vaguely worked like the sea gate at one point in time.

Sliding through a gap between it and the wall, she steps into the ruin and cannot believe her eyes. This is the most intact space of First Ones anything that she’s ever seen. The homes are dilapidated but still standing, made of stone just like the wall but carved with beautiful symbols. Tilting her head, she squints at the nearest carving she can clearly see and is confused to find that she cannot read it. At least, not all the way. The words are jumbled and strange.

Was it in a different dialect?

Pursing her lips, she moves through the silent ruins and listens. There is not much besides the wind and the hiss of the leaves, the squelch of her footsteps through the wet ground giving away her position.

Out of curiosity, she walks near the buildings and peeks through the windows. As expected, the interiors that she can see without breaking inside are dirty and corroded. Everything is so layered in dust and grime that she can hardly tell what it is. Still, she can discern that these were living areas from the furniture. A residential district?

At the same time, she notices that the sword is reacting. It warms and hums in her grip as she explores, only growing more insistent the closer she becomes to a tall building that resembles the crystal castle in size and architecture.

“That might be a temple.” She murmurs to herself, lifting the blade to gaze at her own reflection. What she sees makes her wince. “Ugh, I can’t wait to get a bath.”

The doorway of what she is assuming is a temple is partially collapsed. Great. Disturbing the stone in order to fit would be dangerous, potentially disrupting the integrity of the structure. It’s definitely the oldest thing here, she can tell that just by looking at it.

Trusting the beckon of the sword, she skirts around the outside until she finds a hole just a meter up that she can squeeze through.

When she hits the ground floor, she sends up a cloud of dust so thick that she coughs. Shielding her nose from the onslaught, she lets her eyes set to the gloom. She’s in a central chamber whose ceiling has weathered far more storms than she can fathom. It’s missing several long strips of metal and stone that have either fallen inward or peeled away from the wind and rain, sending slats of shifting light against the walls that warp to the shadows of the trees outside.

Moving around the debris on the floor, she manages to get to a far wall that resembles the console she interacts with in the crystal castle. Sweeping her hand across the grimy walls and pulling several clusters of moss and vines free, she discovers more carvings. She cannot read them, but this time they paint a picture.

Humanoid figures crowd around the base of an altar, one of them rising past the others to ascend to the top via stairs. Glancing off to the side, she recognizes the shape of steps beneath a crumbled wall—though that portion of this large room has been demolished by its own roof. Looking back to the image, she examines the figures more carefully. They are faded and full of dust, but she cannot mistake the telltale ears and tail that they have.

“What… are these?” She gently runs her fingers along the etchings, following the story with her eyes.

The lone figure rises to the pedestal, where it stops at some sort of… opening? It bends to one knee, arms up in offering. Something speaks from within the opening and the figure enters. What comes back out isn’t like the humanoid at all, but a large panther-like creature. The figures at the bottom seem to be rejoicing.

All of these people in the drawings look a lot like Catra.

A sharp ring stings her ear, causing her to jerk back from the wall with a cry as the sword burns in her palm. For a moment she thinks to berate the weapon for scaring her like that, but she notices that she has been plunged into an unsettling silence. The sword had been filling her head with so much noise that she automatically tunes in to her surroundings when the voices abruptly stop. Her eyes scan the room, mulling over every detail until something catches her attention.

Her feet leave a trail through the dust as they slide into a defensive stance, squaring her shoulders as her gaze zeroes in on a section of shadows moving across the wall. The wind faintly whispers outside, whistling through the cracks in the ceiling and sending the shapes dancing. When everything stills for just a moment, she catches it.

A hiccup of movement, like the quick inhalation of a breath.

Slowly, she starts to see what is wrong.

The dark shifts in an unnatural way, misaligning as her eyes struggle to pick the visual puzzle apart. What she thought were shadows stretch and move over muscle, beginning to stand out as black stripes against tan fur. She can see the dip of the spine now, following it down to a pair of eyes that glint at her from the ground. Half suspended in the air by the wall, the creature detaches its claws from the stone and twists to touch the floor. Adora’s gaze widens with horror as the beast crawls into the light. 

“Catra.” Her voice is a trembling whisper.

Adora feels even weaker than before as Catra stands up, towering over her with a wicked grin. Her mouth is open and dripping, the corruption having spread across her naked torso to cover shoulder to shoulder. What little of her left side that remained largely consisted of her arm, which was just as long and mangled as the other and hooked with lethal claws. Her tail slowly waves back and forth behind her, stopping to subtly tick when their eyes meet.

Adora has known her long enough to recognize that signal. The tense second before the pounce.

She doesn’t have time to reason with her as she holds up the sword and immediately backtracks to put space between them.

“For the Honor of Greyskull!” She barely gets the words out as Catra lunges with a painfully distorted yowl, narrowly missing She-Ra’s side with her black nails as she dodges. The other arm swings wide, and She-Ra isn’t used to its length. The claws shriek across the metal of the blade, parried but sending her skidding back into the wall from the sheer forced alone. Her heart is thudding in her chest, and for the first time in her life she’s actually afraid that Catra has no control.

This is Catra trying to kill her.

“Let me help you!” She doesn’t know if talking will work, but it doesn’t stop her from trying. She-Ra leans back out of the way of the black arm and manages to get the sword up in time for Catra’s mouth to close around it.

The metal cuts into the roof of her mouth and wedges between her dark teeth, spilling ink into the carvings in the blade. Her yellow eye is rolled up into her head, while the other stares at her with a deep, foreign hunger. The weight of the beast bears down against her forearms, the corrupted side of her face beginning to quiver and move of its own accord. Without warning, the black peels off and sharpens into fangs, reaching over and around the sword to snap at her. She-Ra cranes her neck back to avoid the stretching maw.

With a roar she summons all her strength and throws Catra back, heaving and feeling her muscles ache and burn from the strain. She was tired and worn down before this fight even started, and not even She-Ra could compensate for the exhaustion that carries over. Still, she doesn’t allow time to recover and charges forward. Normal Catra is fast, but this thing is practically impossible to hit. It bends and breaks Catra to avoid her blows, bones cracking and pushing up against the flesh only to roll back into place with pops that make her stomach roll. Looking to cleave the blade into her thigh, Catra twists her leg out of the way and steps on the sword as it swings—pinning it to the ground as her uninfected hand buries its talons into her injured leg.

She-Ra cries out in agony, ripping herself away as she stumbles and takes a knee. Blood soaks through the white of her outfit, running down her leg when the fabric takes all it can hold. Sweat is dripping down her forehead and neck, arms shaking with strain.

The creature that was once Catra approaches, standing before her. Looking up into that horridly twisted face, she tries her best to repeat a mantra in her head.

_It’s not Catra. You can’t save her. It’s not Catra. You can’t save her. _

_You know what you have to do. _

Catra’s left hand wraps around her throat, lifting her back onto her feet before slamming her into the jagged wall. The creature’s breath is strangely cold on her wet cheeks, leaning close as the yellow eye seems to be coming back into focus.

The grip suddenly cuts off her air, too weak to fight as she kicks and squirms. The voices have started in her head again, growing louder and louder the more her ears start to ring. Her eyes are fixed on that burning white pupil, the wide grin, the teeth that will surely find themselves in her corpse if she didn’t do something.

Panic starts to set in. She thrusts her elbow back into the stone and metal so hard that it cracks the wall, then jabs forward.

She expects some resistance when the blade enters Catra’s gut, but she’d stabbed so hard that it simply breaks what it cannot get past on its way out the other side. The noose of fingers around her neck goes slack.

Looking down at the dark liquid that begins to seep past the sword, She-Ra’s eyes well up with startled tears. Apologies whisper past her lips, unable to be heard past the cacophony of shouting and ringing in her skull as she gulps down air.

“N-no. No, Catra. I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The shock brings a sob to her lips, realizing too late what she cannot take back. A hand bathed in warm light reaches out, tentative and afraid to touch where the sword is buried in still tender flesh. She’s come all this way with the intention to heal, just to give into her fears.

She’d kept her promise, but where was her anger now?

_“Adora.”_

Her head snaps up, clean lines cutting down her dirty cheeks as she is met with that unmarred grin. The golden eye is fully fixed now, a glimmer of something familiar that pulls another wave of horrified tears from her.

It’s hate—unbridled and raw with pain. Twisted and feral.

_“There Will Be Nothing Left Of Your World.” _

The corrupted hand lifts and its long fingers coil around the blade.

_“Not Even Light.” _

She-Ra screams as the blackness engulfs the sword, shoving her back into her true body and sending an electric shock through her system.

In that instant, the voices in her head become clear.

_GEMINI. _


	9. Swallow the Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp. season 4 completely destroyed my emotions! i am an empty void. 
> 
> that being said i am S H O O K. 
> 
> TW: Gore

Swift Wind takes a momentary break from his vigil at the base of the elevator to look over his shoulder and check on Bow. The archer is working with Entrapta on replicating the signal she created that wards off the beasts, making a point to keep well away from the business end of Scorpia’s tail. The force captain is pacing, having paid no mind to any wary glance or suspiciously observant staring Bow has been casting her way. Her pincers are quietly clicking together, a hum filtering up from her throat as she tries to keep her nerves under control.

“It’s been two whole days! No word from Adora?” Scorpia finally explodes, twisting to face Swift Wind. The horse’s ears flatten against his head, nervously meeting the eyes of every other person in the room.

“Uhh… no, not yet. Sorry.” His attention starts to go back to the elevator, but the rapid approach of the large horde soldier causes him to scramble into a standing position and flare his wings defensively. If Scorpia noticed the gesture as being hostile, she didn't act like it.

“I’m so worried about Catra. Can’t you send Adora a message? How does this thing work, exactly? Is it an antenna?” She reaches out to touch the point of his horn. The horse lifts his head out of reach with a scowl.

“Ooh, is your horn First Ones tech, too?” Entrapta chimes in, eyes bright and recorder ready.

“Hey! Just cause I'm a horse doesn't mean I don't have autonomy! I can form conscious thought now, you know, have been able to for a while.” The alicorn huffs, ignoring the way Bow coughs through a laugh, “No, it’s not First Ones… at least, I don’t think it is. Yes, I can reach out to her, but I don’t want to disturb her or make her think something is wrong.” He looks far from happy with this setup, yet he’s been doing his best not to lose his head. Bow has been helping with that a lot.

“She said she would call for him once she found and secured Catra. If we try to reach her before then she’ll definitely come back as soon as possible and lose progress.” Bow explains. Scorpia groans and drops all her weight into a chair. It creaks with the force but stays intact. 

“Waiting is horrible when we don’t have any idea what’s going on.” Scorpia laments. It’s the most they’ve spoken in the last twenty-four hours, and Swift Wind can relate. Never one to withhold aid in whatever way he could provide it, the alicorn walks to her side and gives her cheek a nudge with his nose.

“Don’t worry! Adora is good at everything, so she’ll find your angry friend and bring her back, for sure.” He gives a decisive nod. Scorpia doesn’t look fully convinced but gives his flank a careful pat with her claw.

“Thanks, Horsey.”

He stamps his hoof in irritation.

“It’s not  _ Horsey,  _ It’s  _ Swift Wind _ !” A toss of his head shows off the brilliant colors of his mane. Scorpia gasps in wonder. “I named myself after the Swift Winds of rev—” He stops, neck twisting to look at the ceiling. The room is tense all of a sudden, with Scorpia getting to her feet to stand beside the steed and try to find what he was searching for.

“What’s wrong?” Bow asks, joining them by the elevator. Entrapta flips up her mask and observes from a distance. 

Swift Wind’s brows knit together with a palpable worry as he passes a serious look between the trio.

“I can’t feel Adora anymore.”

* * *

Adora hears more than feels her spine pop when her body contorts to wrap around the console she’s thrown into. It knocks the air straight from her chest, a harsh wheeze cut short as her teeth clamp down on her tongue. Iron floods her senses, stomach swimming as she drops to the floor. Her elbows barely catch her fall, leaving her gasping on her stomach. Blood trickles down her lip—every throb of her pulse thumping behind her eyes. 

Within her chest, Adora feels something not-quite-physical collapse. It’s like the explosive death of a star, bright and unbearably hot before a cold, gnawing ache expands to take its place. The shock of it stutters the breath from her lungs; shuddering like all the soft parts inside are covered in bruises. A sudden and acute exhaustion strips the muscles from her bones, hips sagging into the floor as her body trembles beneath its own weight.

That empty space pines for its missing piece, compelling her to look up, up, up into the eyes of the beast before her. Catra, or whatever had possessed her, sways and gurgles up a surge of dark liquid. It drips from her chin, drawing Adora’s gaze down to the blade protruding from her abdomen. Fear slots itself as a replacement for the brutal severance of her connection, working in as adrenaline that gives her enough strength to speak.

“Catra?” Her palm flattens against the floor, “Catra, let me—augh.” The attempt to change positions is met with failure, slipping further onto her stomach as pain seizes her back. Despite the stiffness growing in her neck, she forces her head to stay craned up. “I can still help you.” She doesn’t know how, and she doesn’t care to figure it out right now. All she wants is to know that this is reversible.

She can still fix it.

Adora tries again, yet abruptly stops with a dry shout of “No!” as Catra lifts her hand and reaches for the pommel.

Instead, Catra’s long, tawny fingers wrap around the blade. It cuts into her palm, shedding red this time, as a warbled grunt leaves her foaming lips. The agonizingly slow removal of the blade cracks and frees the dam of blood that pushes out from the edges of the wound. The sword seems to stretch on into eternity, surprising and sickening her with the length that is pulled free.

There is a too-long slit bisecting Catra’s gut, cutting down in a subtle angle into her pelvis. It’s wide enough from the disturbance that the skin and fur dangles loose, soaked through with a river of effluvial ink that rolls down her leg. A faint trickle of light bleeds through the gaps of her ragged flesh and bone. Adora’s throat clenches when the monster takes a single step toward her.

“Catra, stop!” Adora cries, mustering every ounce of determination to crawl forward on her elbows to meet her. However, it’s too late, as she is halted by the loud clatter of the weapon hitting the floor a meter in front of her. It sheds no light as the lingering blood branches out through the dirt. The runestone nestled in the center of the handguard has gone from a cool, baby-blue to an abyssal black like the blade. Horror strikes deep as a trembling hand reaches out, grasping at the sword to pull it near.

She feels nothing. No rush of power, no flood of relief at being reunited with the humming energy. It’s quiet and still.

Dust curls off the temple floor when Catra falls to her hands and knees, torso bucking and thrashing. The wet sound of popping bone causes Adora to flinch, unable to tear her eyes away as she watches the black parts of Catra peel away. It detaches from her skin, folding in on itself as it crawls up her arm like some kind of twitching insect. A choked sound leaves Adora when the void pushes down past Catra’s eye, shifting it in the socket to make room while draining the darkness from her sclera. Gagging as it slides down her throat, Adora is unable to react to its retreat to the safety of Catra’s insides.

What is left is the smaller, shivering form of her childhood friend. Catra is dirty, the fine fur on her body gleaming with moisture, and her clothes are torn to pieces. Blood is pouring from the wound in her torso, the muscles around the opening jumping and shuddering with every shallow inhale.

“Let me help you,” Adora murmurs, grunting with the effort of pulling herself closer through the sharp stab of pain that shoots straight into the middle of her spine. Her right foot goes numb. Gritting her teeth, she manages to shift positions and use a step to sit upright. The moment her fingers brush Catra’s shoulder, the feline’s head snaps up—eyes wild and unseeing. Her pupils contract into slits, recoiling away from the touch and wailing in torment at the way the movement strains the wound. “Catra! You’re going to make it worse!” Adora forcibly grabs the blindly swiping arm to prevent those lethal claws from making contact. Catra’s face grimaces in agony, growling through clenched fangs as Adora carefully maneuvers around her.

“It’s okay, l-let me…” Adora hiccups over a sob, not having noticed that tears were streaking down her face again at Catra’s suffering. Upon closer inspection, she isn’t exactly sure how she plans on helping her friend. The wound is huge on her smaller body, nearly having sliced her in two. “J-just be still for me, okay?” Plucking at a shred of cloth that obstructs her view, her breath catches in her throat. It is no longer actively bleeding, but creeping tendrils of black have woven over the opening; threading together to keep her stitched into one piece.

Adora doesn’t know what to do. Her hand inches closer, some part of her feral with panic urging her to grab a fistful of the darkness and rip it free. Claws clamp down around her wrist to stop her, gazes meeting. Catra’s forehead is slick with sweat, her breaths haggard and loud. For just a second, there is a clarity in her vision that is tired, confused, and full of poison. Fangs stained pink show in a snarl, oozing red around the teeth pushed crooked by the sword.

“Don’t touch me.” Her voice is dry and full of grit. It surprises Adora through the defensive hunch of her shoulders, knowing that Catra’s insides are painted with tar. At any moment it could come lashing up from her throat, bubbling like crude oil exploding from a puncture—all razor sharp and diseased. Still, she couldn’t pry herself away. The guilt she felt kept her rooted to the spot in spite of the danger.

“You’ll die if I don’t do something. I can heal you with—” She bites her tongue, looking over to the dark, lifeless weapon lying nearby.

Catra doesn’t answer, her hold like iron. Adora sucks her teeth in mounting desperation, trying her hardest to focus on the one thing she might have had control of, only to feel it slipping through the spaces in her fingers. An uncomfortable pain flutters beneath her ribs, heart hammering so hard it makes her dizzy. Relenting, she jerks her arm back and winces at the discomfort it causes. Mismatched eyes watch her with wary, feverish animosity—the fine fur not matted down by mud or sweat spiking when Adora moved to try and get the feeling back in her leg.

Dehydrated, exhausted, hopeless, and without direction, Adora feels a snap of rage sting against her ribs when Catra growls at her. It’s irrational, her irritation, yet she can’t stop herself from giving in to the delicious, easy heat that burns in her neck.

“Shut up! I was trying to help you and you don’t want it, so you don’t get to growl at me!” Catra’s ears fold against her head, blinking owlishly at Adora’s red face. Shame douses the simmering coals that tumble through her gut, grinding into ash that tastes bitter with guilt. Annoyance plaintively scratches against the door of her resilience. Panicking wouldn’t help either of them right now, though Adora had never been adept at sifting through the consequences of her actions. Her heart flutters in the grip of her rising fear, forcing herself to turn away from Catra and pull the sword into her lap. 

The blade is dark and unresponsive, so black that it seems to pull the gloomy, gray light of evening and entice the room into dimming. She is alone inside her own head, a sensation she never thought that she would find herself afraid of.

Closing her eyes, she concentrates on the memory of her connection. The comforting warmth, the call of her steed, and the deep sense of purpose. Nothing answers back from the void she gropes in.

She is hollow and ordinary once more.

“What’s going on?” It’s a long shot to ask Catra anything with the state she’s in, but Adora tries regardless. The feline has drug herself back half a meter and stretched out. She doesn’t look comfortable at all, and frequently shudders as though cold. It doesn’t shock Adora when she doesn’t receive an answer, only a venomous look.

Nearly a year has passed since she left the horde, nearly a year of reforming who she was and what she stood for. Tidal waves of doubt threatened to sweep her away, yet she had found shelter in the arms of her friends away from the guilty tug of the riptide. Unlearning the solitude and loneliness of the horde was something she would always struggle with, yet she’d never felt more isolated than she did in this moment.

The realization brings back tears that itch down her dry cheeks. She catches just a single lash of Catra’s tail before she leans down to rest her face in her hands and cry. 

The moonlight ages from gold to silver, bringing with it the heavy, foreboding blanket of night. Shadows move with the low whine of the wind, covering the interior of the temple like the fiber of a nervous system—rivers of shivering pathways that tell the walls to breathe. Adora casts a wary look toward Catra, though her former friend has closed her eyes and looks as if she is trying her best to fall asleep. Body half-turning away with a gasp of pain, Adora catches sight of her back through the ruins of her shirt. The silver light washes out the color, but part of her sinks. The fur along Catra’s spine lengthens from her mane, thickening into a dark dorsal line that goes all the way to the base of her tail. Stripes curve like jagged ribs from the center, nowhere near as pitch as they had been when she twisted from the shadows.

They were much longer than Adora remembered. Then again, the last time she had checked was when they were children.

She had been marking their progress, tracing them with an awed touch in her bunk as she softly described their frequency and length to her excited friend. To Catra, it was as thrilling as gaining height or broader features, a mark of maturity that no one else in the horde shared. As she got older they got bolder and covered more of her—placed in a natural, disorganized symmetry that hid her in the slotted shadows of the ventilation systems and the training field. Adora has always admired them.

They were beautifully, uniquely Catra.

Then, age and its intricate laundry list of rules was splayed out before them. No longer was it appropriate for the two to lie in bed together. Shadow Weaver began separating their shower times and hovering in their barrack to catch them if they tried to get close. While neither of them understood it, getting in trouble was the last thing Adora wanted for them. So, she stopped checking.

They were fully fleshed out now, their shape only interrupted by the massive perforation in her lower back. Adora winces and turns away.

Watching the walls wasn’t helping her imagination as she tried to succumb to sleep, her heart plunging every time she dozed off—convinced she saw Catra turn to look at her with a black, black grin. She cannot help but envision the corruption clawing its way out of her, slithering along the floor to push itself in whatever crevice it could find. The palm of her hand clamps down around the dribbling holes in her numb leg, suddenly aware of her uncharacteristic vulnerability. Tucking her thumbs into her fists, an anxious tingle makes her hands quiver at the thought of it squeezing under her nails.

Deciding it best not to let herself be so exposed, she slowly leans up to rip off her pantleg below the knee, tying the military-grade fabric around her thigh and cinching it tight enough to sting. Light-headed from the descent of shock and blood, she allows her torso to slump back against the ground. It’s uncomfortable, but she doubted her bed would be any better for all the bruises she could feel opening up all along her skin—like nocturnal flowers hungry for the moonlight.

Eyes closing, she devotes her idle, untamed thoughts to a task so that they don’t continue to conjure monsters. Drinking in the cool night air, she tries her hardest to relax through the pain. Tentatively this time, not driven by panic and animal instinct, she steps into the void behind her eyes. Something about this abyss is… occupied. Almost corporeal in its density. It feels like the ocean, unfathomably deep and hiding teeth.

A prickle of suspense flushes across the back of her neck. A warning sign not to fight something that she could not see, a warning to avoid the dangerous games that could be played in the dark. The memory of the voice from her nightmare rings too close to her spine, a widening maw that is ready and waiting to strike at the slightest mistake. Her emptiness begs her to search further for her connection with the sword, with Swift Wind to call for his aid, but her sensibilities tell her to step away. 

Adora starts with a cold gasp, blinking rapidly at the ceiling. As fast as she can, she turns her head to look at the slithering stripes that narrow and expand with Catra’s uneven breaths. 

Scooting further away from Catra proves difficult, and it doesn’t alleviate the crawling sensation she gets when her back is exposed. It’s not hard to remember the searing pain of her claws scoring down her spine.

When she does manage to fall asleep it is only because her body is spent, and her paranoia cannot compensate.

* * *

Catra groans when she wakes into a lucid state, greeted right away by the sharp sensation of pain in her stomach. Blurry vision struggles to clear in the gloom, trying to adjust based on the time of day. Or night, given the way she can feel the ache of her pupils widening to absorb what little moonlight was offered. A hard blink causes her to realize that there is a goo stuck to her eyelids, and that parts of her fur have hardened into crusty spikes.

With a cautious touch, she reaches up with a hiss of pain to dab at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, squinting at the dark mucus that she smears between them. It tingles against her skin in an unpleasant way, bordering on uncomfortable. Wiping it off on the floor, she tenses when she hears a scuffle behind her.

Catra is barely able to recall where she is, let alone any of the events that led up to this point. Memories are fleeting images, like someone clicking through a briefing much too fast for her to comprehend the information. Piecing them together makes her head hurt too much to try.

The woods, she remembers the woods. The trees… black and opening. She can hear the animals, feel their breath against every broken blade of grass. She’s there, in the roots of the island, down into the sand and the sea. Salt is bitter on her tongue; blood thick and sweet like honey and iron. There is flesh under her claws, packed tight with the dried ichor of a god. 

She can smell the wet soil in the rain, the slime of moss on the rocky cliffside. There is something sweet hiding below her in the dark of the storm, its light captivating like a moth to a flame. Light, it has a taste now, a scent that she would follow until she could devour it whole. Yet another cycle in which she chased an inevitable destruction—the wolf that chased the stars. 

Her vision clears, finding herself somewhere else entirely. This place familiar in a distant sense of the word, like a bad case of Deja vu. The interior vaguely reminds her of that weird temple she found Adora in all those months ago, the very same that she had left her hanging in while her world dissolved. 

But, this one is different. Looks, smells, and  _ feels _ different. Yet, just like the last one she was in, she is not alone. 

“Catra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys for all the awesome comments and kudos!!! hope you all enjoy this chapter! sorry for the long wait, i had a lot of my free time sapped away these last few weeks, on top of an injured shoulder. 
> 
> also you guys should check out this art i got commissioned from my buddy! she's a great artist and defs deserves more love and attention. Check out her twitter! 
> 
> https://twitter.com/sailorveus
> 
> [](https://nickpic.host/image/rW01rs)  



	10. The Corpse Of Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sdfsdfh im so sorry, the holidays and some other projects sapped me dry. this was a long time coming. hope you guys enjoy!

Catra stiffens with a hitch of breath. The way her muscles lock causes more pain from her abdomen, forcing her to swallow a choked sound that would give away that she was awake. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a dream.

Adora wasn’t here.

“Catra, I know you’re awake.” Adora’s tone is harder, now. However, Catra doesn’t respond. She stays with her back facing her, curling tighter into herself to hold off the belief that she was not just a feverish delusion. “You need to tell me what’s going on.” Adora switches immediately from stern to strained, her distress obvious in the hoarse inflection of her voice. “Please.”

“I don’t know,” Catra croaks, the sound of her own words foreign to her ears. Her mouth is so dry and swollen that the confession hurts on its way out. Her emotions scatter from her desperate grasp, searching for something to feel in the wake of her confusion. There is too much happening at once, though anger has always been a low-hanging fruit. Taking it dulls the turmoil, and the bite is tart with a comforting rage. 

“I don’t believe you. What did you do to the woods?” Ah, the accusation. Adora is closer, causing the fur along her spine to bristle. It’s caked in mud and other substances from the jungle—peaking it into stiff, triangular spikes that make her body language hard to read. This silent warning is all she will get, but it’s never stopped Adora from crossing that line in the past and she doubted it would make a difference now.

“There is something very wrong here, Catra. This whole thing—the portal—what happened in there? What happened to _ you _?” Without waiting for a reply, as though Adora knows she is done answering, she barrels onward. Then again, Catra made it abundantly clear as to who does the footwork for emotional and communicative recovery in their relationship. Years of inseparable closeness have tangled and left them so intertwined that Catra knows Adora cannot help but chase the vibration of the string she plucks on their web.

She’s always the ‘_fix fix fix’ _to the problem_, _whereas Catra is the ‘_break break break’_ that causes them. 

That ringing starts up in her ears again, throbbing at her temples and beating against her skull—demanding to let that voice back in. She curls up tighter, pausing at the wet sensation when her arms cross over her abdomen to hold herself. Ignoring the quiet hiss of pain behind her, Catra unfolds and looks down for the first time and goes still.

They’ve been fighting in a war for as long as she can remember, but she hasn’t been out in the field much. Sure, they had caught glances of injured soldiers being wheeled in after a siege, but it was never as gruesome or personal as the jagged, black smile indented into her gut. Her breaths grow quick and painful, eyes widening with a startling, sudden panic. The black—it was inside her? An itch grows in her nailbeds, claws lengthening. She must get it out. This isn’t right. She has to get this thing out of her, even if it’s all that’s keeping her together.

Air squeezes between her fangs as she sucks in a sharp breath, claws biting into the edges of the injury with the intent to tear herself open. Her mind is shrouded in confusion, sickness, and the violent, feral part of all things trapped.

“Catra! Stop!” Cool fingers grab her arm. Their hold is absurdly strong and wrenches one of her hands free before it can do any real damage. The movement causes her to yowl in agony, the black tendrils that lace her torso tightening against the pull. “Stop it! Calm down!” Adora wrestles Catra’s arms down, dragging her back against her chest to hold her still as she fights.

This is far from the first time Adora has done this to her. It used to be _ for _ her, but that was before she left the Fright Zone.

The blonde stays quiet through the wrestling and the snarling, tucking her head close to Catra’s dirty, unkempt mane of hair to avoid the gnashing teeth and claws. Too soon, she no longer has the strength to struggle and slumps. Gulping in air, the ragged sound of her greedy lungs is the only thing that breaks the silence. Once more, the passage of time is lost on her as she sags in Adora’s arms, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Her flaring nostrils drink in the scents that threaten to suffocate, yanking her attention away from what was hiding inside her body. 

Switching from hyperventilating to deep, slow breaths, Catra gradually begins to ground herself.

First of all, Adora _ stinks _, not that she herself is smelling any better. The mud has soured in her fur and in Adora’s hair and clothes, the metallic tang of blood lingering on her tongue from her cut teeth and Adora’s wounds. With an indignant hiss, she pulls at her human restraints.

“Let go of me. You fucking smell.” Catra snarls, wiggling to free herself of the hold that invokes an uncomfortable duality that crawls across her skin. The warmth of longing that clashes with the frigid, ever-present reminder of betrayal. 

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.” Gods, why did Adora have to be so stubborn? Catra’s jaw aches as she clenches her teeth, craning her head forward and throwing it back with all her might so the resounding _ crack _ of their skulls knocking together drowns out their mutual yelp. With a deft twist, the feline breaks the hold and falls onto the floor. The way her open torso moves unnaturally is beyond comparable to any suffering she’s ever experienced. The pain renders her immobile for several seconds. 

For once getting the message, Adora sits back and doesn’t try to grab her again—gingerly rubbing her forehead and glaring. Too dizzy to move, Catra lays down half a meter away from Adora, trying to find the best position to alleviate her pain.

“Why are you still here?” Catra bites, peering at her former friend with one yellow eye. “Just want to watch me die since you couldn’t kill me?”

Adora’s face pales in shock before it boils in anger.

“Yeah, I came all this way, braved a jungle, and fought off creatures way worse than the stories the horde told us just to stab you. You got me!” It’s been such a long time since she’s heard angry Adora that she isn’t sure how to feel about it, “Seriously, Catra? How you manage to be difficult when you’re a sneeze away from being in two pieces is beyond me.” Now that, that strikes a nerve.

“What? Do you want a thank you for not cutting me in half? You’re so _ merciful _, Adora.”

“I was scared! I thought—I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you, but I’m not going to leave you like this.” Of course she isn’t. Catra really fucking hates that about Adora and hates even more the way it makes her chest flutter in hope.

“Save your hero complex for somebody else,” Catra spits.

“Wha—? Ugh!” Adora scrubs a hand down her face, then her expression falls. Her anger is all of a sudden doused in water, dying out with a forceful exhaustion that Catra watches cool in her eyes. “Whatever you want to believe, that’s fine. Regardless, I’m going to figure out what’s going on and you’re not staying out here.”

Catra feels her lip roll back over her fangs, stomach flipping at the loss of control. Toying with emotions and getting a rise out of others was the only way she ever learned to get a grip on the situation. It got her in trouble all the time, but no one in the horde could resist the provocation. Her heightened and constant aggression crafted a reputation, one that she felt the need to uphold to ensure that she was the creature they all thought her to be.

“Waste your time, then. I don’t care.” Catra bites off the last word, turning over again to avoid Adora’s icy stare.

The blonde has always been so easy to ruffle, enough that she twists an ear back to listen for a grumble of protest. When she hears nothing but a sigh, her tail lashes and her insides squirm in bitterness.

No longer able to heat the anger in her blood, the fever creeps back in. She’s still shuddering and sweating, still aching and in pain. Forcing her eyes shut, she tries her best to ignore the presence at her back and all the noise she’s making. Adora’s breathing is extra loud when Catra is trying not to listen to it. She can hear the way she shifts the sword in her lap and the way her fingers skim and tap against the blade. The once mind-numbingly annoying hum that thing did is finally silenced. Except, it doesn’t make Catra happy.

She doesn’t remember anything from her… “episodes.” They linger on the fringe of her mind, much like dreams do upon waking. She isn’t sure what happened to the sword, but the mere thought of it brings back a taste impossible to describe. Her rough tongue traces the lining of her lips. Suddenly, she’s hungry.

Pulled from her head with a shiver, her ear turns to listen to the grunt and groan of Adora trying to do… something. Catra refuses to move until the loud clatter of the blade on the stone makes her jump. Sitting up with a hand over her wound, she hisses at the way the blonde is sprawled out--like she’d just caught herself in a fall. 

“What are you doing?” Catra’s tail lashes. 

“I can’t call Swift Wind. I can’t… I have no connection with the runestone in the sword. We can’t sit here and wait for them to notice.” Adora replies, look hardening into something entirely unreadable. Still, Catra catches just the barest hint of a warble, and a sneer curls her lip. 

“Useless without your princess power? You’ve gotten weak.” She doesn’t have any idea what a Swift Wind is, but that rotten part of her rejoices in its loss. 

The jab doesn’t get the reaction she desires as Adora reaches for the sword again, this time watching as she balances against it in an attempt to stand. Catra notices the way her right leg is limp, drug up as her arms shake to accommodate her weight on the unstable point of the blade. She takes a few steps before stiffening with a short cry of pain, crumpling back down to her knees. Catra’s ear flicks impassively. 

Now the frustration is written plainly in the furrow of her brows and the glassy sheen of her blue eyes. Witnessing Adora be so feeble doesn’t have the kick to it that she was hoping for. It’s not easy to separate her emotions, given the infectious nature of her anger. Trying to comb through them now would be of no use to either of them, so she resigns to looking away once more. She would allow Adora to make whatever choices she wants, and in the end Catra would resent her all the more for it. 

The headache coaxes Catra’s attention back to how awful she feels. The fever brings shivers, which brings pain, which brings throbbing and disorientation. Her vision sways, pointed ears rotating to catch the faint sounds of wind against the temple walls. A temple; some part of her knew this place, and yet that deja-vu knowledge did not lie within. Like it was drawn onto her bones by a foreign hand. 

“Are there any holes above us?” Catra asks after a long bout of silence, having picked up the wail of the wind getting louder outside. 

“No, why?” Adora takes some time to respond. Her voice sounds suspicious and tired. 

“The wind is getting louder and I don’t want to get wet if it storms.” Just to make sure she wasn’t lying, Catra casts her eyes up toward the ceiling. Her vision is split in two again, seeing whole stone vibrantly lit on her right, yet cold and ancient on her left. 

“It’s not getting any louder.” Adora sounds so sure that it makes Catra twinge in anger. 

“I doubt your stupid ears hear as well as mine do.” The feline growls. 

“They hear just fine. It’s not getting louder.” The insistence would make Catra incredulous if it were anyone but Adora. Give her any physical obstacle and she will find a way to overcome it. Give her a test and she will study until her eyes fall out to make the best score that she can. Ask her to lie? Never in her lifetime will Catra have an issue with figuring out whether or not the blonde was being disingenuous. Regardless, she’s seen Adora’s stubborn overconfidence knock her on her ass plenty of times to know that she could still be wrong. 

Catra doesn’t know who this person is: this Adora that asserts herself and her beliefs more often. She used to do anything she could to allow Catra to feel capable, even if it meant getting bullied or risking Shadow Weaver’s displeasure. 

“Whatever.” Catra hisses. Her ears strain to pick up the sound. It’s only coming from her right, and with dread she realizes that her realities have split into the low whine of the temple with Adora, and the murmur of many voices and light. She shuts her eyes, blocking out the strange words and unintelligible babbling. 

Twisting away from the imagery, she dares to look at what is waiting on the other side. 

Everything is still again, yet Catra is now facing Adora. The blonde peers back at her, half leaning on the sword of protection. She’s filthy, yet every blink shudders her form. In the seconds they appear her brain clips together a consistent image. The blood that drips from her hands and down the blackened blade do not hide the vibrantly red veins that spread from the runestone and up her thick, golden arms. Where the gray of her eyes once was is now black, like her pupils have consumed the entirety. The veins go up to the corners of her eyes, peeling back the lids to show the wide-open void. 

_ “All That You Crave Will Be Mine,” _ coos that ambient voice from She-Ra’s grinning mouth. 

Clawed hands raise to clamp down over her ears, breaths quickening even through the dying ring in her head. She hears Adora beckon for her, tones soft and concerned and normal, yet she crawls down so deep inside herself that nothing can reach her. 

Then again, was she safe in her own head?

* * *

“Do you know if we’re getting close?” Bow asks while leaning over Swift Wind’s shoulder. The horse’s ears turn backward to listen before his question is stolen by the wind. 

“Uhhh, I think so? It’s hard to get a grasp on anything through all these trees.” To emphasize, he taps a hoof against a clump of branches as he dips to pass over the top of the canopy. “Last place I felt her was near the center, but this island is huge. It’s difficult to pinpoint just _ where _ the center is exactly.” Much like trying to hit the bullseye on a target you couldn’t fully see. It’s quite overwhelming for a creature caught between animal instinct and conscious thought, unsure of whether to flee from the stress, ignore it, or shut down. None of the plausible options were very pleasing and didn’t help them get a grip on where Adora might be.

That, and the black had reached all the way to the canopy and spread out, thus ruining their chance to follow a potential trail. The steed has been flying for long, agonizing hours, and has no concept of how much time has passed in their search. Bow’s eyes are torn between the jungle top and his tracker pad, which he tweaks and adjusts to emit the frequency Entrapta had shown him whenever a flying predator tries to approach.

“Entrapta uploaded a rough map of the island for me, but it’s all scans that the Horde did a while ago. I don’t know how accurate they are. I’ve been trying to clear them up the best I can and match what we see down there.” Bow’s distress is evident in his tone, and Swift Wind is in much the same emotional spectrum. It’s rare for them to be helpless, even in the most dire of straits. “Head north, Swift Wind. All we can do is try at this point.” 

“You got it! Don’t worry Bow, we’ll find her and get her back safe. You have my word as She-Ra’s steed.” The alicorn is trying to have enough hope for the both of them. Bow is stubborn when it comes to optimism. If all else fails, he will be the last one standing and urging his friends to carry on. However, this was an unusual circumstance they find themselves facing--no one has ever lost track of She-Ra before. It’s different when Adora gets kidnapped by the horde, because they all know where the Fright Zone is (it’s not hard to spot a giant, loud, glowing green hole in the ground). This, though? She can be anywhere in this sea of trees, especially since they don’t know where she found Catra.

If she even found her at all. 

Sweeping low to glide, Swift Wind reaches back for the sensation of their connection. Quiet is all that calls back, leaving him empty. 

“Hey, are the trees thinner over there?” Bow shouts above the wind, pointing to the west where the treetop horizon seems to dip.

“Let’s go check it out.” Banking left, the alicorn curls his feet to avoid the sharp snap of the twigs and leaves. Sure enough, several acres of the jungle must have been cleared to make room for this large city. It is enclosed on all sides by a thick wall and four collapsed gateways. Circling overhead, Swift Wind stops to hover in place and allow Bow to broadcast the signal. It hurts his ears, but doesn’t invoke the same response as it does the wild beasts of the island. 

“Alright, we should be okay. Take us down,” Bow says, tucking his tracker pad away in his bag as they descend into the heart of the ruins. 

The ground has long since dried from the rain a few days ago, a flurry of dust clearing from a broken stone path as the beat of Swift Wind’s wings gently sets them back on the ground. Bow dismounts while the steed anxiously paws at the road, hoof clicking with the tempo of his heart. Ears pinned, the horse ducks his head low and sniffs at the dirt. The faint scent of blood is enough to send him back peddling with a frightened whinny. 

“What, what is it? Did you find something?” Bow rushes over from where he had been looking into one of the structures to smooth his hand down the unicorn’s neck. The touch is only marginally soothing, but Swift Wind appreciates the effort. 

“Blood. Maybe Adora’s, I don’t know. We should hurry, this place has a bad feeling. This whole island is freaky.” Swift Wind does not operate well under pressure, especially not when everything in his body is telling him to _ run. _

“It’s okay, buddy. Let’s take a look around first and see if we can find any indicators that she was here.” Bow’s voice is gentle, yet the unicorn can’t seem to get himself under wraps. 

“We could also try yelling for her and see if we get a response--that’s definitely faster.” Without waiting for permission, or for Bow to surely tell him that that is a bad idea, the alicorn opens his mouth and shouts, “Adora! Adora where are you?!” 

“Swift Wind, stop! We don’t know how well this signal will work against a bunch of animals, or if Catra is here…” Bow takes a nervous look about them, yet Swift Wind carries on forward. 

“The faster we find her, the faster we can leave. Call her with me, Bow. Adora!” He cranes his neck as Bow tries to grab for his mouth to hold it shut. 

“Swift Wind!” Bow tries hissing once more. The alicorn ignores him and quickly trots ahead--shouting all the while. 

“Adoraaaaa! It’s Swift Wind! Where are you?” His voice echoes from the empty alleys, reflecting his panic like a shadow of sound. Bow has caught up at his side, arrow nocked and ready as his dark eyes vigilantly keep watch on their flanks. 

“This is such a terrible idea,” mutters the archer. 

A breeze rolls over the village, cool and soothing as it brings a moan from between the structures that surround them. Swift Wind is so tightly wound that he nearly misses the barest hint of another voice mingling with nature. His ears straining forward, Bow yelps through a facefull of feathers when a wing shoots out to stop him in his tracks. 

“Did you hear that?” The horse whispers. Bow uses his fingers to part the colorful plumage before whispering back, 

“No. What was it? Did it sound big? Are there a lot of them? I can’t hold my tracker pad _ and _ my bow.” 

“Wait, listen. Adora! Adora, where are you?” He shouts again, head out and senses reaching. 

“I don’t--” 

“Shh!”

There it is again, nestled among the wind, a cry from up ahead of them. Swift Wind doesn’t wait for a response as he back-peddles and sticks his head between the archer’s legs to scoop him up onto his back. Bow clings with another noise of surprise, fingers winding into the horse’s mane as he gallops toward the looming form of a structure near the border of the outer ring. Hooves kick them off the ground the moment he sees that the door is blocked, circling the sides for holes or entrances. 

“Adora, we’re here! Are you in there?” Bow cries with his hands cupped around his mouth.

“--m he--! Bow! Swi-- --- down ---re!” Another voice answers from within, finding its way through the fractures in the walls. 

“It’s Adora! Let me down, I can get in through that gap.” Bow’s voice cracks in his joy, too eager to wait for a safer position before leaping from Swift Wind’s back and scrambling through the hole in the ceiling. The unicorn is quick to follow suit, though he cannot fit in the gap due to the width of his shoulders. His head and neck fit just fine after his horn scrapes against the stone and knocks some pieces loose--exposing wiring beneath. 

“Are you okay? What happened? Why can’t I reach you?” The horse can’t contain himself, firing off questions faster than anyone can process. It is dark in the temple, yet he can pick out the form of Bow jogging through the space to kneel down by Adora’s side. Half a meter away beneath the cool fold of a shadow lay a smaller body. Immediately it sets off the steed’s alarm bells, that and the place smelled of mold and blood. “Adora, are you hurt? Is that Catra?” He asks, volume falling to a whisper that bounces from the walls. So much for being quiet. 

“I’m alright, Swifty. I think.” Her reply is faint. Hearing it soothes the panic that was running through the horse’s system, his sigh of relief breaking the low murmur of their words as Bow attempts to figure out what’s going on. “It’s so good to see you both. I knew you would come for me.” Adora’s words fill him with pride, returning her tired smile with a brighter one. 

“I hit my back,” Adora explains, her voice rough and dry, “I’ve been having trouble walking.” Swift Wind sees Bow nod, rounding onto her left side to curl an arm around her waist and stabilize her. 

“Did something happen to the sword? Is that why I can’t hear you?” Swift Wind’s eyes search for the glowing blade, yet what they find stirs up that devastating loss inside him. “Is that…?”

It’s difficult to see Adora’s expression from this height, but in her response he can hear the shame and defeat. 

“Catra touched it with--I don’t know what she did. I can’t transform and I couldn’t reach out to you. I don’t feel anything from it.” Bow lifts her as she speaks, interrupting her own explanation with a grunt of pain, “They were telling the truth. That infection in the trees? She’s spreading it, but I don’t think she has control over it. Whatever it is, I think… I think it’s in the sword.” 

“What does that mean?” The tone Bow uses suggests that he doesn’t truly want to know the answer. 

“I don’t know.” 

Swift Wind opens his mouth to spout more questions, but is cut off as a screech rises from the jungle. Backing out of the hole, he moves just in time as the talons of a massive wyvern scrape along the wall--sending sparks flying in its wake. Banking sharply, the unicorn’s features twist in fright when he looks upon the creature. Its eyes are empty, dripping holes, half its formerly silver scales cast in vanta black that absorbs the moonlight. Its form twitches and breaks as it turns around for another strike, fading in some places and splitting in others.

“Uh, we need to hurry up, guys! We have a problem out here!” the steed cries, barely dodging the attack by folding his wings and dropping from the air. The wyvern dives after him, and as he beats his wings to duck underneath it, its neck splits apart and glitching, oozing black tentacles shoot out after him. They swipe at his back and neck, barely missing the short fur on his body as his flight pattern is disrupted. Unable to keep himself up, he crashes to the ground--legs buckling at the last possible moment to alleviate the pressure and avoid a break as he tumbles through the dust. 

Getting his bearings, the unicorn only has time to feel the cool shadow of the wyvern falling over him before its talons stretch and seek to find his throat. 

“Go, Swift Wind! Move!” Cries Bow, who has shuffled from underneath the collapsed doorway and fired a trick arrow at the wyvern’s feet. Sticky green goo dulls the lethal point of its claws, the next arrow affixing its wing to its body and forcing it to land. Meanwhile, Swift Wind gets to his feet, galloping in a wide loop to Bow’s side--his chest heaving. 

“Thanks, Bow. Where’s Adora? We’ve gotta get out of here.” The steed backs up toward the doorway as the wyvern hisses, the tentacles in its neck shuddering and curling as it stalks forward. 

“I had to let her go just outside the door, but if she can crawl out we can grab her and go.” Bow replies, arrow trained on the blackened animal that stalks ever closer. 

“We can’t leave Catra!” Adora shouts as her forearms drag her through the crawlspace and into the light, “We can’t let her infect anything else.” 

“Adora, we don’t have time for that.” Bow says with grinding teeth. The wyvern snaps its jaws and lunges, a well-aimed arrow tangling a net around its mouth. Its free wing digs at the material, roaring as it rears up and the tendrils of black from within its chest lash out. Swift Wind and Bow dodge as best they can, avoiding getting touched by them as much as possible. 

Looking torn, Swift Wind glances between the wyvern and Adora, making a split second decision to flare his wings and take flight. 

“I’ll distract it! Go get Catra, Bow!” The unicorn swoops down and viciously kicks at the wyvern’s head and back, wings beating back to pull himself out of the way of its massive skull that swings at an unnatural angle to find a bite. 

“Ugh!” Bow fires off another net to wrap around its free wing, trying to keep it grounded for as long as possible as he runs and slides beneath the space and back into the temple. Adora has mostly crawled out, the dark blade clutched in her hands. The sight of it nearly causes the alicorn to get wrapped in a flailing tentacle. 

His attention is dangerously split between the doorway and the wyvern, who he desperately needs to stay trained on him so as not to realize there’s a free meal lying on the ground only a few meters away. Instinct begs him to turn tail and fly away while he could, yet his devotion is stronger. He would never abandon his friends, most of all Adora when she needed him. 

The wing sealed with goo breaks the drying substance, extending out as the claw on the other tears through the rope. Its fangs grip and gnaw at the net around its jowls, shredding it to free itself. 

“Oh, jeez. Is he back yet?!” Swift Wind shrieks, unable to take his eyes off the beast while it leaps, heavy wings sending up a thick cloud of dirt and debris as they carry it toward him. 

“Hang on, Swifty! He’s coming!” Adora shouts. The wyvern turns toward her in an instant at the sound of her voice, body cracking as it folds to take the sharp angle. Landing heavily into a shambling walk, it looms over her. Swift Wind’s loud cry is nearly drowned by the buzzing that starts to fill his head, catching the whisper that drips from its maw like the ink inside it. 

_ “Herald Of Light.” _

The unicorn comes crashing recklessly into its back, kicking at the hard, metallic scales still intact along its spine. The tentacles curve around its ribs, lashing at the alicorn while keeping its attention on the prone, vulnerable Adora. 

Bow reappears from the crawl-space, an arrow already released towards the wyvern’s jaws. The distraction works, for the most part, as it seems to reel back from the blow. One of the tentacles latches onto Swift Wind’s foreleg, whipping him from the air and sending the horse skidding along the concrete past his rider. 

“Swift Wind!” Adora screams, teeth grating as she tries to stand. Swift Wind’s side burns from the force of the impact, knowing that the scrapes have taken some of his fur and blood is welling up. Around his leg is a black mark from the creature, winding in a toxic spiral that sears into his skin. 

Bow has Catra secured to his back as he finishes exiting the temple, stiffening when the reptile’s black eyes land upon him. Boxy head clicking to the side, it gives the impression of looking past him. 

Swift Wind slowly gets to his feet, forcing himself to stand despite the pain radiating across his torso. Spreading his wings, he takes flight to retrieve the trio, freezing when he spots Catra’s right eye wide open and so black not even the moons reflect in it.

The wyvern doesn’t move, seemingly rooted to the ground while it waits for Catra to be deposited onto the alicorn. Bow picks up Adora and mounts the steed, who doesn’t hesitate to take off into the fading daylight. 

The creature stays still and does not follow, staring after them. On his hind end, Swift Wind feels a dark, uncomfortable energy, and winces at the bite of Catra’s claws into his haunch. 


	11. The Dark Below

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry for how slow these have gotten. the current world issue has my work schedule flipping me between nights and days each week, so i've been really exhausted. but, i was chipping away at it and finally have an update. thanks for all the nice comments you guys! they are hella motivating <3

Catra is dreaming. 

Her state is lucid, floating between surface and depth, muffled sounds from the outside world pounding on her door. The air is a weight in her lungs, filling her bloodstream with lead. 

She’s moving, though if this takes place in her mind or in reality, she cannot say. A lurch of her body sends her tumbling, weightless. It’s a haunting sensation, memories drawn back to the split of the portal--the sharp contrast between searing light and frigid dark. 

“What are you?” She cannot help but cry out. The words echo, like enclosed within a room, yet they circle back--loud and braying. The crack of fear in them tears at her chest, makes her breaths quick, and her eyes sting. 

_ The End _ , the voice drifts up, soft as a silken whisper spoken in comfort, from the lopsided smile below her ribs--the one holding her together, _ The Beginning. _

It’s not anything she can describe to another living being, having this creature speak from within her body--the low vibration of its words growling in her belly. Like a second head embedded into her torso.. 

“What do you want?” 

An iciness overcomes her, pierces within like a winter wind is cutting through the gap in her waist. It’s a rush of air inside, like she is breathing through it. 

“Why are you doing this?” The previous question goes unanswered. This would have made her angry, were it something that she could understand. Instead, it makes her feel small, inconsequential. What purpose did it have in speaking to something so infinitesimal? The Puppeteer does not explain the plot to its puppets, it simply makes them do as it wills. Tugging on their strings to dance and bend and break, shaping the world as it likes.

_ Flesh Is Finite, It Cannot Reach Beyond Its Fabrications, _ comes the whisper from the Dark below, _ It Does Not Bleed The Ichor Of Hunters, Only The Filth Of Prey. _

_ Prostrate Slaves To The Light That Flees From Its End. _A pain starts at the edges of her wound, feeling it stretch and stretch into a long, jagged smile. 

_ This Flesh Conquers. _

_ Predator Of Black Teeth. _

Catra’s claws bite into her fur, undoubtedly drawing blood despite the way she is going numb. She lurches again, sent forward or backward, up or down. It is impossible to tell. She has fallen so deep that none of those things have meaning anymore. 

In the portal all those months ago, she had reached for something she did not understand. She took it in rage, fear, and agony. The darkness she thought she was destined for had a mouth, and it spoke. She had wished death and destruction upon everyone that had ever loved her, or had claimed to, and took for granted every last soul on Etheria. In the end, she had failed. 

Now, she saw that it was only just the beginning. 

Disconnected from herself, the cold moves from the inside. The beat of her heart slows, wrapped in the hypothermic embrace of the black that coils around to suffocate. 

The voice is in her head, her ears, behind her eyes, and in her gut. It sounds so sweet as she lets go, wishing to perish in the void she had set upon the world. 

_ Out Of One, Many. _

* * *

Adora is trying not to be irritated at the way Scorpia keeps looking at her. 

She already explained her side of the story, not that Catra’s inability to defend herself helped any. Scorpia was incredulous of the exact details, mainly what led to the wound that nearly split Catra in two. The guilt she feels is immeasurable and raw, sensitive to any reminder that disrupts her focus. Figuring out what to worry about first was impossible, especially with Scorpia’s glares burning a hole into her already aching chest. 

Swift Wind shudders at her side, his soft, colorful plumage stretched protectively out over Bow and herself despite his pain. Wrapped like a dark serpent, the same black inside of Catra is curled around his foreleg. A living tattoo cut into his fur and pressing against his skin; the smell was bizzare and made the hair on the back of her neck stand up whenever the wind blew it into her nose. They wrapped the bleeding parts before their hasty departure from Beast Island, but the black was seeping through the bandages. 

Thankfully, he is not delirious like Catra, nor is he feverish. 

It does not escape her notice that Scorpia bears a similar line on her neck. Was it there before? No, she would have asked if it had been that long. 

The skiff is not impervious to the anger of the ocean, lurching them forward as it crests a wave and is airborne before it hits the water with enough force to throw them. A jolt of paralyzing pain shoots up Adora’s back, groaning as she braces herself against Swift Wind’s warm belly. Emily rolls by with an alarmed beep, catching herself against the railing at the last possible moment. 

“Entrapta!” Bow shouts, “Could you slow down? We have three _ very _ injured people on board, remember?” His voice is strained with the effort of remaining calm. Adora doesn’t know how he manages. 

“Oops! Sorry about that, I only got to ride on one last time. There are so many buttons.” Entrapta’s apology is hard to read, but she slows the skiff down all the same. Adora glances over to check on Catra, scowling at the way Scorpia clutches her tight to prevent any jarring that could worsen her state. 

“That, and I’m going to be sick.” Swift Wind mutters, his eyes half-lidded as he shifts positions. 

“How are you feeling, Swifty?” Adora asks, smoothing a hand down his neck once she gets comfortable. 

“Oh, peachy, really. My leg feels like it’s on fire, but not like… hot fire. The cold kind.” His ears fold back. The misery on his face adds to her helplessness. 

“We’ll be back in Bright Moon soon, then we can get you some help.” Adora reassures. It’s an ambitious hope, to be sure. However, giving up was not an option. She has to believe that everything is going to be alright. 

The rumble of the engine engulfs the silence that follows the exchange, the warm spray of the water dampening her skin as the skiff gently banks to keep on course. Bow’s hand has not left hers since they boarded the craft, squeezing whenever he wants her attention or to offer support. She can’t be more grateful for his presence and his strength. 

“Hey, Adora?” Speaking of which, she turns her head toward the archer when he speaks to her, “Why do you think that thing let us go? It just… stopped attacking.” 

“I don’t know.” Honestly, she hasn’t bothered to come up with a theory on that, yet. Everything is happening so fast that the finer details are smeared. The main question on her mind was: what were they going to do about Glimmer? How does she explain something she has a hard time believing, herself? 

“Do you think it has something to do with Catra? What’s in her, I mean.” Bow spares a wary glance before continuing, “She is the source as far as we know. Maybe she can control things that get touched?” 

“She was hardly coherent in there, let alone aware enough to control anything when we were leaving.” Catra has done so much already, Adora doesn’t have any more room for further conflict on her part. 

“You told us that it moved to fill the wound, is it possible that it’s _ organic _?” Entrapta has butt into their conversation, striding over on her hair, “Or, a type of matter that we have never seen before? It might even be sentient and able to communicate with its other parts.” Her eyes gleam with interest, but Adora feels as though she is going to be sick. 

“I hope not. That sounds horrible.” Bow replies, looking just as shaken at the prospect. 

“We could learn so much! If she came across it inside the portal, between realities, it could unlock so many answers about other dimensions, and perhaps why the wormhole we created was unstable.If it is able to live in these spaces, what else is out there?” Entrapta has her mind going a mile a minute, as usual not grasping the potential severity of the situation until she is given results from her data. 

“Let’s focus on stopping the spread first, okay Entrapta?” Adora’s voice is a bit tight, as it can be when dealing with the scientist and an already thinned patience. 

“Right, of course!” If Entrapta noticed anything pointed in the question, she did not react and went back to pulling off panels and examining the wiring in the skiff. 

Adora’s fingers cautiously move over the dark blade in her lap, unable to warp its shape to fit around her wrist. The texture is strange, smooth and cold. Made of some crystalline metal and First Ones technology, she is used to the odd grooves and circuitry on its intricate surface. Whatever was wrapped around it filled in all the dents and spaces, choking it of its humming life and warm radiance. Feeling frustration build when Adora catches Scorpia glaring again, she curls her blunt nails against the surface of the sword and scratches. 

The darkness resists, catching on her fingertips and shocking them into immediate numbness. With a gasp she pushes the sword off her lap, staring with wide, gray eyes--waiting for it to peel away from the surface and snap at her face. It remains still at her feet. 

Bow squeezes her hand to get her attention. 

“Adora? Are you okay?” He asks, dark eyes half-lidded with fatigue, yet sharp with concern. 

“It… No, I don’t know. The sword is covered in that stuff.” The moment she mentions that, his feet scoot up rapidly to bring his knees to his chest. Peering over them at the blade at her feet, he gets comfortable in a half-turned position to keep himself away from it. 

“Should we cover it up, or something?” He whispers like it can hear him. 

“Yeah, uh, maybe that’s a good idea.” Adora’s thoughts are stuck in the temple, fearful of the creature pulling itself from Catra’s body to squeeze into one of her open wounds. She shudders at thinking that that could have happened at any point since then. 

“Hey, Scorpia, can we use that blanket? We want to cover up the sword. We think it might be infected, too.” Bow does her the honor of reaching out to the large horde soldier sitting across from them. Scorpia scowls, but plucks the blanket from around her own shoulders to hold out to him, keeping the one she had around the shivering Catra. 

“Yeah, sure. Best to be careful around the _ stabbing _ utensil, it’s really good at _ stabbing _things.” Scorpia hisses, dark eyes fixing on Adora. The blonde grinds her teeth, sick of having to defend herself to ward off the doubt of her actions. No one could convince Scorpia but Catra herself, and Adora doesn’t expect that to be the case when she woke up. As far as she knows, Catra’s smear campaign wasn’t over. 

“Do you remember when I told you that the sword was trying to tell me something? Before I went to find Catra in the jungle?” Adora asks, carefully picking up the weapon by its hilt and laying it on the blanket once Bow spread it out. 

“Wait, the sword can talk?” Scorpia pipes up, her look bewildered. 

“Jus—” Adora starts, 

“It can communicate?! What does it say? Has it told you any secrets about the First Ones? Will you ask it questions for me?” Entrapta squeals, suddenly next to them in a rush of dizzying energy—way too much for someone who’s been trapped on an island with minimal resources for six months. 

“Only I can hear it!” Adora doesn’t mean to shout above the excitement and confusion, but the volume of her voice does get the message across. Pulling it closer with the heel of her left boot, she tucks it to her side to protect it from Entrapta’s very talented, but dangerous little hands. “And it’s not like, words exactly, just some humming and whispering.”

“That’s pretty creepy.” Scorpia comments. 

“No, it isn’t.” Adora feels as though she’s being defensive for the sake of being defensive. 

“I do have to admit that it is a _ little _ creepy, Adora.” Bow ultimately looks ashamed for deciding to chime in at the expression of betrayal Adora wears. 

“Is it creepy that I talk, too?” Swift Wind’s brows are furrowed, eyes wide and nostrils flaring like he’s prepared to defend his rights as a talking horse. 

“No, we’re used to it.” Bow, Scorpia, and Entrapta reply in unison.

“That’s not the _ point _! Can you two mind your own business?” Adora is teetering between a lot of emotions, the main contenders being embarrassment and annoyance. 

“I mean, you said it where everyone can hear you…” Ugh, if her back wasn’t hurt she would get up and wipe that blameless look right off Scorpia’s face. 

“Sooo… you _ won’t _ ask it anything for me?” Entrapta asks, seeking some oblivious clarification. 

“I swea—” Adora is getting ready to blow a gasket when Catra groans and turns her face into the crook of Scorpia’s arm, ears folded back tight against her thick mane of hair. Without even saying a word, yet, guilt sweeps over Adora at disturbing her, mixing with her anger into a confusing dichotomy that brings her to an unsteady calm. 

“Can _ all _ of you shut up?” Catra mumbles, “Your stupid argument is making my head hurt.” 

“Sorry, sorry,” Scorpia apologizes, adjusting so that they are both more comfortable since Catra decided to move. “Do you need any help getting back to sleep? I can sing?” Even from across the skiff, Adora can see the bright glare of Catra’s yellow eye looking up at Scorpia. 

“Don’t do that.” Her growl is flat. Scorpia shushes herself, and that is when Adora realizes that Entrapta is still hovering over Bow (who is trying his best to avoid the dirty bottoms of her boots) awaiting an answer. 

“When I get my connection back with it, I will ask it things for you, okay?” Adora offers, sounding exhausted. Entrapta’s face lights up with glee. 

“Great! It’s a date!” Side-tracked yet again, Entrapta moves from their space and Adora wonders how she ever manages to get anything done--let alone how she built an entire labyrinth of a castle. Wait… no, that actually makes sense now. 

“You were saying about the sword?” Bow’s voice is sheepish, pulling her from the quiet frustration in her head. Blinking, she realizes that she had gone back to staring at Catra in Scorpia’s arms. 

“Forget it, we’ll talk about it when there aren’t so many opinions waiting to be heard.” Adora grumbles, peeved at the interruption as a whole. They had another night out on the water before they reached land, then it would be a trip to Brightmoon. Her stomach curls into knots at how she was going to salvage this. Glimmer was going to be furious, to say the least. It was one thing to return injured, without her ability to turn into She-Ra, and more questions than answers. 

It became another beast entirely when Catra was added into the mix. 

The darkness speaks through Catra’s mouth, it kills with her hands, and it knows _ her: _She-Ra. Though it is her friend’s eyes and face, what is living in her is already aware of her weaknesses and faults, demonstrating that by going straight for disabling the sword and cutting her off. The more she counts her disadvantages, the bigger this feels. How can she fight something (and someone) who knew both forms better than herself?

Is Catra awake when it uses her?

She has no answers, only theories, and those would not save Catra, Scorpia, or Entrapta from Glimmer’s wrath. 

Laying herself against Swift Wind, she forcefully shuts her eyes. Sleep will elude her, so Adora tunes her senses to the world around her. It’s all she can do without the buzz of the sword to aid in blocking out the viral worry of her thoughts. 

* * *

“Halt! State your business!” Entrapta slowly raises her hands in defense when the guards at the border of the whispering wood point their spears up at her chest. Scorpia has a noticeable sweat dripping down over her brow as her position mirrors the smaller princesses’. Before the guards can react further to the two horde soldiers showing themselves from the edge of the skiff, Bow and Swift Wind make their appearance. 

“Hey! It’s us! Don’t kill them, we can explain. We promise.” Bow’s words are quick as he signals for Entrapta to dock the skiff and allow it to touch the ground. It settles with a hiss of air and a dying rumble of its engines, flattening the tall grass beneath its hull. 

The guards blink in confusion, looking between one another in clear hesitation of what they should do. 

“I’m here, too, hey guys. Just, uh, let Glimmer know we’re back?” Adora calls down to them from Swift Wind’s back. Catra is tucked carefully against her chest, bracketed by her arms and wrapped tight in the same, sweaty blanket she’s had the entire trip. After arguing over it, the decision to let Swift Wind carry down the injured won out due to his wings being unaffected by his wound. Scorpia keeps her eyes trained on them as the alicorn stretches his wings and lifts off with a hop. Gracefully, he glides to the ground and steps gingerly on his three good legs, the other curled up to avoid his weight. 

“Oh, uhm, right away She-Ra!” The guards finally respond, one rushing off towards the castle while the other approaches. Stepping behind Scorpia and Entrapta when they get off the skiff, the Brightmoon guard lowers the spear to their backs. 

“Whoa! H-hey, there’s no need for that! We’re friendly!” Scorpia replies nervously. Adora feels the urge to make some snide remark, but she bites her tongue instead. 

“They helped us get back here, and they defected from the Horde.” Bow explains, “We’ll let the queen decide on what she wants to do when she gets the whole story.” His confidence is admirable, that’s for sure. 

The walk to the castle is arduous, the familiar scenery pumping her rapidly beating heart with dread instead of relief. It sluggishly passes by, made aware of every small movement of Catra against her, curling one arm around her waist to hold her steady when they angle and mount the steps to the courtyard after what feels like years. Swift Wind’s ears swivel forward, tall and alert, and Adora’s breath gets caught in her throat as they crest the top of the stairs and the doors to the castle fly open. 

“What _ happened _?!” Glimmer’s shrill cry is sharp, causing Adora to flinch forward as though trying to hide behind the thick neck of her steed. The fact that she was holding Catra in her arms feels like a betrayal (and it was), resisting the urge to dismount and put distance between them. 

“Glimmer, we’re okay! We’re back!” Bow rushes forward to meet her, wheezing as the queen—staff in hand—lunges forward and throws herself around his middle. “Adora is banged up but we are okay!” His words are short of breath, embracing her in return and valiantly trying to hold her long enough for Adora to try and pull the blanket over Catra’s head. 

“I was so worried about you both! You didn’t come back when you said, and when I scryed for you all I saw was Bow and—and _ those _ two! I thought you were being held captive!” Glimmer’s face is streaked with tears, though it doesn’t detract from the anger boiling in her eyes. She frees herself from Bow’s grip, stalking forward to Swift Wind as the end of the staff begins to glow. Adora knows that Glimmer is much more powerful now that she has forged a connection with the moonstone, and her palpable anxiousness causes Swift Wind to hobble backward a few steps. “Get away from her, Adora.” Glimmer’s voice is dripping with venom. 

“Glimmer, you don’t understand—” Adora tries, she really does, but how is she supposed to explain? 

“I don’t understand?! Adora, she’s the reason my mother is _ gone! _ And I saw her! I saw you both in the temple. Whatever she is, I don’t care. She’s dangerous and I’m not going to let her hurt anyone else. You told me you wouldn’t, you promised.” Glimmer’s tone borders between anguish and rage. Adora feels her chest tighten at the reminder of the words she spoke, the promise she did not keep. “If you can’t do it, I will. Get away from her, now! _ That’s an order.” _

“Please! Let me explain!” Adora pleads, getting desperate enough to ignore the stab of pain in her back when she shifts on Swift Wind’s back. The alicorn’s neck stiffens, trying to twist back to look at his rider and make sure she wasn’t doing anything stupid. 

“Adora, be careful.” Swift Wind says, whipping back around when Glimmer stalks closer. 

“Glimmer, there is something seriously wrong here and Catra—” Saying her name was a terrible mistake. Glimmer roars and disappears into a poof of glitter, reappearing beside Swift Wind and thrusting her hand through the blankets to grab Catra’s wrist. In the next instant she is gone again, back in front of them with Catra pressed to the ground. The force captain’s eyes have opened, pupils barely lines in the mis-matched colors of her irises. A violent hiss is torn from her chest, gasping in pain as she tries to twist away from the knee pressing into her shoulder blades. 

“Glimmer, stop!” Adora cries, wrenching herself from Swift Wind’s back as Catra lets out a yowl of panic and pain--the staff pointed at the back of her head as the ball of light burns hot and bright. Somewhere off to the side, Adora barely registers Scorpia’s shout of alarm and the clatter of armor and carapace. The second Adora’s legs hit the ground her right goes numb, the agony so immediate it sends her to her knees with a gasp. Her head swims, vision closing in around her as she hears Glimmer call her name. The darkness is dizzying and suffocating, blacking out her vision as she collapses. 

* * *

The next few hours are a haze, bobbing in and out of consciousness as the last week has finally caught up with her. Malnourished, dehydrated, injured, and stressed beyond all belief stretched her body to its absolute limit. The moons have gone dark when Adora’s eyes flutter open, greeted with the familiar canopy above the table she had made into a bed. There is something wedged under her lower back that causes her to realize she is drenched in sweat and her clothes have been changed. 

Sitting up slowly, the muscles in her back feel… strange. Tight, maybe? It’s hard to describe when they twitch and protest the movement. Giving up and sliding down on her elbows, she turns her head to look around the room. There are no lights on, but if she squints she can see something moving on a mound of pillows nearby. 

“...Bow?” She croaks, wincing at the rough sound of her voice. 

“Hwhat—Adora?” Bow sits bolt upright in an instant, coughing through a snore and turning around to the sound of her voice. “Are you okay? How do you feel?” He’s frantic and delirious as he crawls over to her on the floor, widely arching his hands as he slaps around for the edge of her bed. 

“I don’t feel good. What happened?” Her mind is sluggish to catch up, feeling as though she was under a spell, or a sedative. 

“You passed out, we rushed you inside to get looked at by the healers and they said you have a bad back injury. They put you under a sleep spell after doing some stuff to ease the pain and make sure nothing got permanently messed up.” His tone turns sympathetic, “They said if you had kept moving around all crazy you might have lost the ability to move your leg.” 

This jars Adora from her suspended animation, grey eyes widening in the dark as she shifts to lash out and grab Bow’s arm. 

“What happened to Catra? And Scorpia? And Entrapta? Swift Wind?” She is nearly breathless with the panic that overwhelms her in a moment, snatched by the current of what had transpired before she collapsed. 

“Oh, uhm… They’re all in prison? Well, not Swift Wind, he’s in his own room being watched over by healers. Catra is in the spare bedroom in the same spell-seal we had Shadow Weaver in, Scorpia and Entrapta are being guarded in separate rooms.” Bow goes quiet, and her stomach twists in on itself. 

“Are they okay?” Adora asks, dreading what the answer will be. 

“Uh, well Scorpia and Entrapta were given food and water at least. Catra has been… kind of wild since she woke up. I convinced Glimmer to let a healer look her over, so they managed to put her out and make her stop freaking out. She didn’t seem to realize where she was or what was happening, but Glimmer didn’t hurt her if that’s what you’re asking.” He sighs, shoulders visibly sagging in the dark, “Glimmer is really upset, Adora. I can’t blame her for how she feels, so I’m not sure how long we have until she makes a decision on what to do with them. Shadow Weaver got her calm and told her to wait for things to settle before jumping to a course of action. Thankfully, Glimmer was way more concerned about you and us than worrying about what to do with them.” There is a bit of hope in his voice, that maybe they had a chance to salvage this before Glimmer went nuclear and acted on her own. 

At this news, Adora is flooded with some relief. Releasing the death grip she had on Bow’s arm, she lets herself lie back against the table. Both of them are quiet for a while, listening to the distant call of insects and birds in the whispering woods drifting through the open window. 

“Thanks, Bow. I’m sorry, this is all my fault. I should have… I should have kept my promise to Glimmer. I wasn’t even thinking about how much this would hurt her.” Adora sniffs, unable to help the way her throat burns and her eyes begin to sting. “A-and now we brought Catra here when she’s dangerous and… I-I-” Her chest is too full, too tight with emotion, and it finally comes flooding from her eyes. A sob shakes her, constricting her sore, bruised ribs and back. “O-ow.” She hiccups between gasps for breath, turning to bury her head against Bow’s shoulder as he leans up to awkwardly drape an arm over her. 

“It’s okay, Adora. You are doing what you think is the right thing. None of us know what that is yet. I trust you, and I know that Catra still means something to you despite all of this. We will find out if we can help her, okay? Glimmer is just angry and scared, and she has every right to be. We have to give her time and respect her decisions. We’re her friends, and she cares about us. She’ll hear us out, I know she will.” He murmurs into her hair. His words are reassuring, even with the lingering madness of what had transpired over the past week. 

“Y-you’re right, Bow. You’re right. She needs time and I sprung this on her, it’s not fair.” Adora pulls back from him and wipes her eyes with her arm. Gosh, she has been crying a lot lately. She sure doesn’t like it. “Uhm, I think I would rather wait to see her until the morning, though. I feel… out of it.” She mumbles. Even in the dark, she sees his firm nod. 

“Of course, Adora. If you want, i’ll go check on everyone before you wake up in the morning and let you know how they’re doing before I go get Glimmer.” Bow is way too kind, and honestly she doesn’t feel like she deserves a friend like him most of the time. 

“Thanks, I would appreciate that. Do you want blankets or anything?” She asks, quite exhausted from the whirlwind of emotions she just went through while under the effects of a spell. 

“Oh, no, thanks! I’m good with all these.” To demonstrate, he crawls back and flops onto the pillows. She can’t help the way her mouth twitches up at the corners. 

“Seriously, Bow, thanks. We’ll… start to tackle this tomorrow. Everything will be fine.” She says that mostly for her own benefit. Neither of them had any idea what was going to greet them when the moons brightened. 

“I’m always here for you, Adora. We can handle this.” Those are his last words before they both fall back into silence. 

Adora does not fall asleep right away, wondering about where the sword was and trying not to let her mind conjure images from the shadows dancing on the ceiling. The singular word the sword of protection said to her bounces around in her mind, a frustrating echo with no elaboration. If she doesn’t try hard enough to avoid it, she can pick apart the shapes and form that horrid creature that was living in Catra’s body—its wicked grin as it tore her from the sword. 

Shuddering, she is glad that she was forced to learn how to sleep on a flat surface, completely still, as her stiff back doesn’t allow for freedom of movement. Adjusting her legs to get comfortable, she reaches deep for the memories of the sword’s voice in her mind. 

_ What is Gemini? _


	12. A Buzzing On The Brain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes sorry these updates are so long! got a lot of stuff im working through, but im really glad you guys have stuck with me thusfar! as always, thanks for the support! drop a comment if you like :3

* * *

“Uhm, Adora, you should try to relax. If you push against me you could injure yourself… And your legs are really strong, it makes holding them up very difficult.” 

Perfuma’s gentle hands ease the ache in Adora’s hamstring, one tucked beneath her knee and the other resting on her shin. Adora’s forehead is slick with sweat, her cheeks red, fist curled tight around the gray fabric of her tank top. The muscles in her body drag against the stretch like rust on a gear, screeching the pain into every nerve in her legs. Perfuma is patient in the face of her frustration, aiding her in rolling over onto her stomach. 

“I am.” The following silence draws an agitated huff from Adora’s chest. “I’m _ trying _.” 

“Let’s test your pain, okay?” The taller princess asks after some time, and Adora sucks in a breath. Carefully, she lifts the heel of her right foot up toward her back by herself, the pressure blooming along her spine--a feeling more uncomfortable than anything. Parallel in sensation to the apex of tension between two points bent and ready to snap. 

Her leg hasn’t gone numb, at least.

“I’m fine.”

“Great! We can call it for today, if that’s alright with you?” Perfuma is chipper as ever, hovering while permitting Adora to get to her feet at her own pace, knowing better than to offer assistance. She does her absolute best to seal her lips together while rising from the table and gingerly swinging each leg over the side. She can walk on her own, for the most part, but her gait is hobbled and stiff.

Despite the grind of her molars, Adora manages a small, grateful smile--fleeting as it is. 

“Thank you, Perfuma.”

Three weeks later and Adora is well beyond irritated with the slow progression of her healing. She couldn’t turn into She-ra to speed it along, she wasn’t _ allowed _ to perform strenuous activity, so what was she supposed to do? The war didn’t stop just because she could barely walk, and now the Horde is stirring from its slumber. Being unable to fight made her anxious. She re-injured herself attempting to train for a recon mission in the crimson waste about a week ago, setting her back to square one and ultimately getting her barred from war room meetings. 

How was she to be useful to anyone in this state?

“You are very welcome. Time to wrap you up.” Adora’s nose wrinkles as Perfuma approaches with a large pad of cloth that would easily cover the radius up her lower back; it’s got a substance heavily soaked into a layered piece of gauze. She has come to know the strong stench as _ herbal _ in nature. 

“What is that stuff for?” She’s wary, half turning from the taller, thinner princess. 

“It’s to help with the swelling and the pain. You’ll probably be sore later, and if you’re not in too much discomfort you need to continue your routine.” She explains, circling Adora to press the cold, vicious salve to her skin. Ew, Adora thinks--it feels like a wet ration bar. “Now, go and rest for a little while. You’re doing great with your exercises--keeping your body strong will help with your recovery.” 

“Well, I’ve always been good at that.” Adora can’t help it, she’s cocky.

Perfuma giggles, dark eyes hopeful. 

“What about the dietary suggestions I made? I am always willing to teach you how to do yoga, if you’re interested. I’ve already got a few of the Bright Moon staff in a class! It’s very good for the health of your spirit, which is just as influential as your body.” Though the flower princess puts a hand to her chest to punctuate her words, Adora can’t comprehend what any of that means, really. 

“Ehh… uh… maybe some other time? I _ am _ pretty sore.” To be quite honest, Adora doesn’t know the first thing about her _ spirit _ or what to do with it. Intangibility of the self was never something she was adept in understanding. 

That, and she didn’t much care for kale. 

“Join us anytime, okay?” Perfuma gingerly wraps her long arms around Adora’s shoulders, a brief embrace that leaves her warm and comforted. A cup of warm tea is pushed into her hands, the liquid surface accented with a round, red flower whose petals are spaciously layered. 

“Do I have to eat the flower?” Adora asks with trepidation, pulling another giggle from Perfuma. 

“No, silly. It’s just a cute tradition of mine. That’s a begonia, isn’t it pretty?” 

“Oh, right.” There are no flowers in the Fright Zone. Still, finding them in the ground was a lot more unusual than in your tea. “Yeah, it is. Thanks.”

Her trip back to her room will take her past the wing they designated as a holding area. Lately, the shadows are longer there, feeding from the darkness housed within the spare bedroom (prison). A quick drop of her heart into her gut redirects her from the path and to one of the pavilions, instead. She doesn’t want to get caught lingering outside again, eager to avoid a reputation as infamous as Shadow Weaver’s for haunting spaces she was expected to avoid. 

* * *

_ “What did you do, Catra?” _Shadow Weaver’s voice is heard clear from the hallway. The interrogation is muffled behind two oak doors, guards posted on either side both inward and out. Adora wasn’t allowed to enter, and her presence was found to be highly suspicious near the ward where they kept Catra. Regardless, the two guards are not able to remove her, not this time. 

_ “I opened the portal, but that’s all I know about what’s happening.” _Catra’s tone is rough, yet ever petulant and rebellious. 

_ “You’re lying. How can you not know anything about what’s living in you?” _Glimmer sounds frustrated. Adora knows from experience that Catra can be infuriating beyond measure to wriggle out of situations she wants no part in. 

She’s also just… mean. 

_ “Fuck off, Sparkles.” _The two guards exchange glances and Adora sighs. 

_ Damn it, Catra. _ It was foolish to expect that she would make this easy for them. 

_ “Ugh! We’ve been at this for hours and she hasn’t given us a single, useful bit of information!” _

_ “Your majesty, allow me to utilize a stronger truth spel--” _

_ “No.” _ Glimmer’s words are pitched low, hardly discernible through the doors. _ “Just… give her something to sleep. We’re done for today.” _

Adora recoils, backing against the opposite wall just as the two guards on standby within the chamber open up the doors. Glimmer steps into the light, the ethereal glow she’d always possessed heightened by her ascension. The bond with the moonstone shone upon her skin, pearlescent and silencing those in close proximity with awe. While they were on Beast Island she had cut her hair shorter, keeping it swept to one side. She is beautiful, Adora has always thought, even with irritation pinching her features. 

Those lavender-colored eyes blink in slow recognition of the disheveled body cowering before them, expression loosening for a fraction of a moment. 

“You’re up, finally.” Glimmer breathes in relief, taking a step closer with the barest hint of a smile. 

Adora wavers, quiet beneath the inevitable crash of the wave that would drown her. Annoyance returns to the queen’s face as Shadow Weaver bleeds from the dim light of the spare bedroom. She cannot see Catra from the doorway, though the way that her throat closes on itself leads her to the conclusion that she wasn’t ready for that, yet. 

“We need to talk. In private.” Glimmer shoots Shadow Weaver a glance before she beckons Adora with a short gesture of her hand. 

Tape and thick bands compress Adora’s midsection to be as rigid as stone. She’s thankful, at least, that Glimmer wasn’t mad enough at her to walk ahead with a brisk pace. Glimmer slows up so they are side by side, becoming steadily dwarfed by Adora’s crawling increase in size over the months.

The trip is weighty on Adora’s persistent fear of failing her friends, muscles itching to release the tension as they always have: through violence. She wasn’t allowed to hit anything in this state, a bittersweet twist of nostalgia surfacing the wish to wrestle out her stress with Catra. Her left thigh aches in memory of the deep gouges that are still healing. 

Glimmer leads her to one of many unoccupied rooms in the castle, closing the door behind them. The windows are tall and wide, letting in the evening light of the waning day moons, washing the kingdom and the surrounding woods in gentle pastels. Twilight only enhances Glimmer’s appearance. 

Adora can’t let her start first, and the words expel from her lungs in a winded rush just as Glimmer goes to open her mouth. 

“I’m sorry, Glimmer. I know I promised you I wouldn’t do this, but I messed it up. I know you’re mad, and you have every right to be. I’m so sorry I--” She wants Glimmer to explode at her, to burn away her disappointment and broken trust. Instead, she sees the queen’s eyes fall, her round jaw setting and brows furrowing. 

“Please, Adora, let me get out my feelings, okay?” Glimmer is exhausted and exasperated, at her wit’s end with the chaos of the last several days since her friend’s return to Bright Moon. 

Mutely, Adora nods. 

“I learned how to scry a little when you and Bow were away. I saw bits and pieces, but most of it was too jumbled to make out. You left into the jungle, you put yourself in danger to find Catra. Do you have any idea how that made me feel? How scared I was for Bow? For you? I know that you can both handle yourselves, but you were way past reckless. Practically suicidal! What if Scorpia and Entrapta had been a trap? What if they captured Bow _ again _ and tortured him like they did to me?” Glimmer sucks in a breath, running a hand through her hair before continuing, “You… You promised me you wouldn’t do this anymore, you wouldn’t keep putting yourself at risk by giving her chances to change. She’s the reason my mother isn’t here, Adora. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Her tone isn’t accusatory, but it is both sad and angry. 

“Of course it does, Glimmer! I--I tried to be the one to--” 

“And that’s the problem, Adora! If you weren’t _ always _ the one ready to put your head on the chopping block, maybe this wouldn’t have happened! None of this! I was terrified when you were injured and bleeding, stuck in that dark place with that--with whatever Catra has become.”

“I’m sorry, I…” 

“I don’t want your apology, what’s done is done. What I want is for you to _ swear _ that you will stay away from Catra while she is here. Don’t talk to her, don’t even go near the spare bedroom. Do you understand? I can’t trust you with this, not right now. You’re hurt and I won’t risk losing you, or Bow, or anyone else.” The queen’s eyes gleam in the low light. Tears are wiped away before they have the chance to fall. 

Adora is quiet for a long time, one hand reaching up to press to the rapid beating of her heart in her chest, the way it flutters in anxious dread. 

“I can’t do that.” Finally, she whispers into the heavy silence. “I left her once, I can’t give up on her again.” Her expression hardens over the pain, “I won’t.” 

“Even after everything she’s done? Everyone she’s taken?” 

The questions are a whip-crack of heat against her ribs, sudden enough to cause a quick inhale to get stuck in her throat. 

“Yes. If Shadow Weaver can come to Bright Moon and be free, why can’t Catra?” Adora has no idea where that came from, but it’s much too late to take it back. Glimmer’s expression falls open, a split second of surprise as it morphs into rage. 

“My mother took you in and granted you amnesty from the horde! You _ wanted _ to change and saw the wrong they did! Shadow Weaver is helping us! Catra doesn’t care about anyone but herself and doesn’t want to change. She likes hurting people.” 

“Shadow Weaver hurt us, too, remember? She’s hurt me my entire life, but you’re willing to forgive that because it isn’t personal to you?” Adora snaps back. She isn’t sure if she’s ever seen Glimmer this angry in the years she has been present as her best friend. 

“Fine.” There is a low resolve in her voice, one that spooks Adora into floundering. 

“Fine?” She parrots, unable to process the violent switch of emotion. 

“I’m _ ordering _ you to stay away from Catra.” 

“You can’t do that!” Adora balks, shouting despite herself. 

“I’m the queen! It’s an order, that’s final. You clearly don’t know when to stop.” Glimmer snarls, “You’ll be placed on twenty-four hour supervision if anyone catches you near the dungeon again.” 

Adora’s gaze threatens to narrow, hot and red and all-consuming. Fingers curl into a fist on the table, knowing that Glimmer feels confident in this because she is without her powers -- without She-Ra to come solve all her problems. 

“You’re not going to treat me like a prisoner when all I’ve ever done is help you.” The blonde spits, hobbling for the door. She doesn’t want to hear anything else that Glimmer has to say. Damn her and damn her orders. 

* * *

Strangely, there are guards posted as Adora arrives at the arch. She soon finds why when her sight clears from the glaring light of the daytime moons. Scorpia is gently picking flowers and sticking them in the rim around Emily’s optical lens a short distance from the edge of the patio. Entrapta is tinkering with the robot’s clunky leg, suddenly lifting her mask right as Adora concludes that being here is a bad idea. 

“Hey, Adora! Your timing is perfect, I need to talk to you.” Entrapta shouts, shutting the panel on Emily’s side and giving the bot an affectionate pat. 

Adora has long-since gotten used to the accommodation of prisoners in Brightmoon, or lack thereof, in comparison to the Horde. Part of her will never settle at the sight of Shadow Weaver haunting the halls of the castle, nor at her being allowed luxuries like tending to an entire garden of dark, foreboding plants. An indignant sting irritates her at the sight of them lining the walls of the pavilion, cementing her belief that Glimmer is being irresponsible (and short-sighted) with her trust.

Needless to say, she is least of all surprised to find these two out and about with supervision. 

“What about?” Adora asks when the shorter princess strides over on her pigtails, resigning herself to being trapped in this conversation now that she’s been spotted. 

“They’ve given me access to your sword, so I’ve been studying it to figure out what’s causing the interference that makes you unable to transform into She-ra. I asked to run trials on it and you to find where the connection lies, but Glimmer didn’t allow it. Anyway, I was able to deduce that the unknown substance covering it has a physical presence, and that it matches no known matter on Etheria! It seems to be acting as a tangible barrier to how the sword communicates with you on all levels. The next stage is to attempt to remove this material and see if you can re-establish a link, but I think she wanted you present for that experiment.” 

A cold shudder runs the length of Adora’s spine, the stress of this information manifesting in a panic that constricts around her chest. 

“Wait, she’s been letting you tinker with the sword?” _ And she didn’t tell me? _ Anger blunts the thorns of anxiety. The sword of protection was removed from her, placed in a container sealed with magic. “How are you going to do that?” 

“I was going to try different methods to see what it reacts to--maybe fire or blunt force--” Entrapta starts, pausing at the reddening look on Adora’s face, “Being careful not to break it, of course.” She tacks on, “I was thinking of just trying to peel it off, but the main problem is interacting with it and avoiding prolonged contact. We don’t know how it binds to hosts, yet, so it could be dangerous. Also, it makes your fingers numb and tries to take tools out of your hands.” 

Adora is reeling, unable to formulate a reply despite the way her mouth opens and closes multiple times. 

“If we can remove it successfully, we might be able to find a way to pull it from Catra! Though, I have a large hunch that the solution to that is on Beast Island, and that there is something else aiding her in not being completely consumed by now.” 

At this, Adora blinks back to her senses. 

“What did you just say?” The question tumbles out before it can be tailored. 

“The experiments could potentially help her, is what I said.” Entrapta says, undeterred. 

“No, the last part about Beast Island. Why do you think something is there?”

“... I didn’t say anything about Beast Island. I said that hopefully we can remove it without surgery. I’m better with robots.” Entrapta’s brow flattens in confusion, mirroring the expression on Adora’s face. 

“W-but you just said something about Beast Island. I heard you.” Adora is insistent, glancing over Entrapta’s head at the five or so meters Scorpia sat staring at them. “Scorpia, did you hear her say anything about Beast Island?” Though the two of them got along like cats and water, Adora knows that, at the very least, Scorpia is as honest as they come. 

“Uh… no. She didn’t say anything about that. Are you hearing things? Can back injuries make your head weird?” Scorpia replies, pushing herself up from the grass and letting Emily roll off into the nearest flower bed. 

“Luckily, I document everything.” Entrapta holds up her recorder, thumb pressing the rewind button and letting their conversation play through. 

_ “If we can remove it successfully, we might be able to find a way to pull it from Catra! Though, I hope that it doesn’t have to result in surgery. I’m better with bots than people, and I don’t know if Brightmoon has trained doctors on staff that know how to safely remove alien material.” _

Adora is speechless, staring at the device like it was lying to her. She could have sworn… 

“Oh.” It’s all she can think to bide herself time to think. What was that? The sword has been silent for weeks, and now she was hearing things? Again, that void it left behind tempts her to reach out, to establish that connection she was missing. Nothing answers back from the hollow piece inside her, her loneliness emphasized by the sound of her own echo. 

“I’ve also been speaking to Bow about the anomalies around Etheria, which I predicted would happen when the portal was opened. They must be cracks in the fabric of our reality, letting alternate timelines and objects come through, or tampering with how we perceive our world.” The shorter princess goes on to say, placing her recorder back into the front pocket of her overalls. 

“That sounds… complicated and scary.” Scorpia says, moving to stand beside Entrapta, “Are you saying that nothing is… really real?” 

“Not exactly. Time, space, and reality as we know it are all relative and always changing. The way we interact with ours is through our five senses, but who knows if there are more that we cannot see or are not present in our version? There are theories of countless realities that coexist intangibly, all superimposed in the same physical space but mutually isolated and evolving independently. Potentially, every decision we make splits into another alternate in which we make the opposite choice than the one we did in this world. Etheria’s instability due to its intricate relationship with magic and First Ones’ tech interfered with its portal capabilities despite it being able to form them in the past. If we don’t find a way to close these wormholes, the problems could become exponentially worse.” 

As usual, Entrapta looks more excited than afraid.

“What will happen?” Scorpia asks before Adora can, her confusion and fear palpable. 

“If realities begin to interact, it could cause more tearing. Either we would lose track of what was ours until time ceased to have meaning to us, or reality would split apart like it did inside the portal.” Entrapta rubs her chin with a strand of pink hair, “Purely theoretical, though! We won’t know anything unless we study. Even then, quantum mechanics is based on the idea that matter can exist as waves, or that light can be made up of particl--” 

“Okay, okay, we get it. It’s bad. We can do your tests, or whatever. Just… not right now.” Adora sputters in an effort to save herself from the headache swelling inside her skull. “I have to go check on Swift Wind.” It’s not the worst excuse, as the condition of her steed was yet another thread of worry to untangle. 

“Alright! Just find me when you’re ready. Ooh, this is gonna be so exciting.” Entrapta kicks her feet in the air, letting out a spew of maniacal laughter before she steps back into the garden to find Emily. 

Adora vacates the pavilion, fingers pressing into her temple to distract the unstable rattling of her thoughts. A buzz of dissonant insects, a cacophony of grinding steel. A sensation lingers across her bones, the feeling of having passed close to something _ other _ in the moment she misheard Entrapta. Voices, guidance, and vague dreams are not rare phenomena. Etheria’s magic is nuanced and layered between realms of the spiritual, the physical, and the inbetween. This, however, she was unsure of. It lacks a warmth of invitation, beckoning her from a place beyond her listening.

Journey taken in a trance, half submerged in the displacement of her mind against her body, she stops just short of the shelter they built for Swift Wind in a pasture at the castle’s base. She realizes with acute clarity how much her muscles cry out and throb from her walk, wincing as she completes it by lowering herself to her steed’s side. 

“Hey, Swifty.” Her voice is soft, pulling her errant self back within the confines of the physical. 

“Hi, Adora.” The alicorn is lying on his side, legs stretched away from his stomach. His eyes are dull and bored, his mane messy and unkempt. Idly, she reaches to pluck the strands of grass from the tri-colored hair. 

“How are you feeling?” She asks, already at odds with the idea that she was going to have to force this conversation due to how fatigued and unmotivated he looks.

“It hurts a lot. Seems like it gets worse every day. The sorcerers do what they can, and even Perfuma tried some smelly stuff on it. Helps with the pain, at least.” His leg is wrapped tight with fresh cloth and gauze, a heavy stench of the herbal concoction clinging to the walls. 

“Entrapta will be helping me reconnect with the sword…” Adora’s words trail off, her hand upon the horse’s neck stilling as she chews on her lip, “I’m sorry that you are going through this needless suffering because of me. And, that I lost the sword and that you’re technically not She-Ra’s steed, anymore.” The guilt in her voice is thick, nearly big enough to hold the words hostage in her throat. Swift Wind stirs beneath her touch, lifting his head to the best of his ability to place it upon her folded legs and look up at her. 

“I’ll always be your steed, Adora. She-Ra or no She-Ra. I’m glad I was able to protect you.” There is a spark in his eye, a sincerity that brings the tears spilling over. Hiccuping over a sob, she bends to press her face into his mane, palm resting on his warm flank to feel the steady rise and fall of his breath. For once, he says nothing, merely acting as a rock in her presence to keep her grounded. 

“I’m going to fix you. I’m going to fix all of this. Don’t give up on me, okay?” Adora mumbles, “I think… I don’t know, yet, but I… someone, or something, is trying to talk to me. I can feel it.” She knows that if anyone will listen to her fears and ramblings, it is Swift Wind. 

“How do you normally figure that stuff out?” He asks, and the lightbulb goes off above her head. Adora shoots up with a yelp of pain, cutting off her declaration before it can start. 

“That’s right! Razz can help me!” Adora shouts once she recovers. “She knew what was going on before…”

“Are you sure? I know you said she helped you in the portal but… Razz is an old lady living all by herself in the woods. Can you trust what she says?” Swift Wind’s concern is valid. At this point, Adora was running out of options for answers, and waiting for Glimmer to not be angry with her just isn’t going to cut it.

“I have to do what I can. The longer we sit around, the worse that stuff gets. We saw how quickly it spread around Beast Island, what it did to the animals…” An icy realization has her eyes tracing the wraps around Swift Wind’s leg. The alicorn’s ears flatten the moment their thoughts sync together. He shifts to half tuck it beneath him with a wince. 

“It won’t be like that. It can’t. It would have been already, right? Adora?” Swift Wind’s voice grows thin in fear. She drops back down beside him, winding her arms around his neck and pulling him close. 

“No, no. I won’t let that happen to you. I’m going to go talk to Razz.” Times like these remind her that he was just a simple horse, once, and that his instincts remain a part of him. A whinny blows from his lips, body restless as he fails to fully curl his leg under him to sit up. The desperate look in his eyes pulls her heart low into her stomach. “You’re going to be okay, Swifty. I promise.” A lofty goal, considering her inability to keep the others. 

“Y-yeah, I trust you. I’ll help in whatever way I can, just let me know what you need. I can still fly.” She reaches out to press on his wings as they extend in emphasis, shaking her head. 

“I need you to stay here and rest so that you can heal, okay? I’ll come right back to you.” Giving his neck another squeeze, she slowly pushes herself back to her feet and dusts the grass from her knees. Giving him what she hopes is a confident smile, Adora heads back to the castle grounds in order to pack a bag. 

Intuition brought her down the road that began her journey as She-Ra, and that same gut-punch feeling is telling her to seek answers. Going out on her own is scary, especially with the suspicion that something’s attempting to reach her, yet she knows there is no other choice. 

The Whispering Wood would show her the path she needs to take, as it had once before when she left the protection of the Fright Zone. Etheria is here to guide her. 

And so, she heeds its call. 


	13. Simulacrum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chuggin' right along, gonna try to be more consistent with these updates. hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> TW: CHILD ABUSE, BODY HORROR

Brightmoon, Catra decides, is too quiet. 

On the nights she is present, she cannot sleep. Confined within a magic seal hardly three meters wide, there is just enough space for herself and a chair. After the first several days of her incarceration, guards were no longer required to maintain a post within the bedroom. Too many complaints and resignations. She overheard Queen Sparkles tell someone through the door (likely Arrow Boy) that it was practically criminal to subject her staff to the “nightmarishly annoying” prisoner all night long. Catra knew better. 

There are brief moments of clarity, like peering through curtains into blinding daylight, when she is  _ gone. _ Faces of guards contorted in fear, disbelief, and incomprehension. Sometimes, she saw them from the blackest crevices of the room, from the ceiling, and always they were looking back at her. 

Every minute shift of the castle upon its steep cliff rattles her. Footsteps in the hall, as rare as they are, send her fur standing on end. There is no perpetual hum of machinery, no bodies tossing and turning in the dark. She’d felt more comfortable on the floor of her cell, cold and familiar, where she knew every corner. This room, with all its lavish negative space, leaves her feeling open and defenseless. A freak on display in a cage. 

The solitary chair, stuffed fat with feathers and cotton, stinks and she avoids it entirely. To every fiber clings that cloying, sickly smell unique to Shadow Weaver. Her scent became a tangible thing over the years she spent inhaling it, a ghost that ignites various, lightning-shaped scars across her body. Grave-dirt and oil, the wick of a burnt-out candle. Catra always recognized it as the stench of something that ends. Has ended. 

Will end. 

Demise via the hand of her caretaker was never a way she would allow herself to perish. Not before she had proven that she was  _ better _ than Shadow Weaver, that she had always been better in every way. The inevitability that the sorceress had attempted to instill within her festered below the surface, guarded beneath a mask of rebellious anger and resistance. 

Catra reaches out and digs her claws into the cushion, tearing it with ease and spilling feathers onto the floor around her knees. They tickle her bare leg, reminding her of how bare this change of clothes made her feel; her usual attire traded for a long, loose shirt and cotton shorts. Her torso is wrapped in fresh bandages not a day old, yet they do little to soak the ink that stains all the way through her top. It’s a sharp, murky line, like someone pressed a pen too hard and snatched it across the surface. It’s just low enough to hover in her periphery, showing itself with a lop-sided grin. 

Many nights she spends pacing the perimeter of the circle. It doesn’t burn like the electrified field of the cells in the Fright Zone, instead offering an odd tingling at the very tips of her nerves when touched. Her tail sweeps across the surface, sending ripples that fade as quickly as they appear. 

Pillow-guts are soft under the rough pads of her feet, fatigue a gradual weight that pulls down her spine in a hunch. It’s hard to stay awake. To stay herself. 

The very moment she acknowledges it, that persistent anxiety in her muscles is given a name. Akin to the sensation of waking from a nightmare drenched in sweat, that the things that haunted your mind in dreams have not quite faded. That some fraction of that terrifying reality has latched itself to the waking world. She knows, now, she is not alone in this yawning prison, and the shadowy shapes of furniture become all the more sinister. 

Catra blinks, and for a split second her right eye reflects the sight of one of those cluttered nooks, sharing the gaze of something that watches her from the dark. 

Gasping, she stumbles back and half falls against the chair, digging her claws into the wood of its frame hard enough to splinter. The ink stain on her shirt gets impossibly wider. 

“Stop.” She means to sound stern, but her voice cracks in a hoarse plea for peace. “You have enough, you don’t need me anymore.” 

The island, the animals, the way the black veins push further into Etheria and begin to darken the ocean. It flashes in photographic instances behind her eyelids, mere pictures until she sleeps. Then, she  _ is _ the ocean, the roots, the creatures torn apart and still walking. There is no Catra in her dreams, not anymore. She is everything it has touched, everything it has polluted. Reduced to nothing and no one whose name is forgotten and never uttered again. 

She sinks down onto the floor behind the chair, tucking limbs into the tight huddle of her body in a way only she could. Her tail completes the closure by framing the curl of her form to cover her tightly-closed eyes.    


For just a split second, as she feels a shiver race down her spine, she nearly shouts into the empty room, but not for the guards outside. 

“A—” The name stops in her throat, burning like poison in her esophagus as she swallows it back down. 

_ Why would she help you?  _ Her thoughts ask, kindling the shame that rolls in her chest.  _ She brought you here to study so she can fix Etheria. Nothing more. If they have to get rid of you, they will.  _

Catra grinds her teeth, claws extending and hands flexing hard enough that they ache. 

“Leave. Me. Alone!”

With vicious precision, she reaches over one shoulder and rips across her back and ribs, a choked sound bitten in half as warm blood trickles down her side. All cognition ebbs in the wake of the excruciating pain, lost in the buzz of priority shifting from emotional to physical distress. It’s only a distraction, but it’s an effective one. 

Her forehead meets the polished stone floor, ears twitching at the quiet sound of her own blood dripping as it fills the silence. 

_ Tik. Tik. Tik.  _

What would she become, if she ended this herself? 

Could she do it? 

No, she has always fought, even when there was absolutely nothing besides her pride as a victory. Thousands could die, millions, if only it meant that she was  _ right _ and that her torment would end at the expense of others. 

_ No wonder Adora hates you. Why everyone hates you.  _

_ Tik. Tik. _

For once, she wants to win. She wants to be the one on top, the one to leave, the one to hurt and be absent of remorse. 

Right? 

What else is there to want? 

_ Tik.  _

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Let me try something?” 

Catra doesn’t turn her head to look at Adora, seeing her eager expression clear enough in the dull light cast by the singular, dying bulb above them. She wants to smile at the sparkle in her eye, but instead feels an uncomfortable flutter in her belly at the rapt way she has the older girl’s attention. Her brow drops and her nose wrinkles in a gaze so scrutinous that it might have curdled milk, were they in possession of any in the Fright Zone. 

“What?” Catra asks, a forced huff of grumpiness in her tone. If she wasn’t difficult about everything then she would be like Adora.

And Adora was stupid. 

“Give me your hand.” Adora reaches for the nearest one as she speaks, fingers caught in that awkward stage between childish stunting and the growth spurt of oncoming teenage years. Catra has no room to yank her limb away in the small storage closet, already pressed shoulder to shoulder with Adora as they munch on stale snacks from a contraband cabinet Catra raided earlier. 

“Sure, okay, Adora. Just go ahead and do whatever you want.” Catra gripes as her hand is taken, stomach flipping at the contact. Her tone is easily sarcastic, one that causes the blonde to roll her eyes and position the lightly-furred extremity to her liking. “Well? If you wanted to hold my hand you could have just asked.” It’s a jab that brings a flush of heat to Adora’s face. 

“Shut up, Catra.” 

Without waiting for another snotty comment, Adora holds her palm so it’s facing toward the ceiling. Her thumbs slide over the pads that grow rough with use, not quite inhuman in their texture as they break apart the downy fur. Catra lifts a brow, about to open her mouth and complain once more before Adora presses her thumbs into the center of her palm. Her fingers curl inward at the pressure on her tendons, responding like strings in a piano. Catra quickly figures out what Adora is seeking as her claws pop from their retracted state.

Tension is released and the claws slide back. Adora does it again so that they return. 

“Really? That’s it?” Catra teases, “It can’t be that entertaining.” 

“You wouldn’t know, because you can do it whenever you want.” Adora insists on repeating the action for emphasis, pouting dramatically as Catra frees the hand of her clutch.

“Whatever. Help me eat these, ‘cause I’m not sneaking back in there to put away the leftovers.” Catra holds up a wrapped article of food, pressing it to Adora’s cheek as she twists to avoid it being shoved into her face.

“We’re not even supposed to have these. Shadow Weaver said—” Adora is cut off with a sharp, dangerous hiss. 

The shift in their demeanor is swift, the older cadet’s shoulders stiffening as Catra bristles in agitation. 

“Who  _ cares _ about what she says? Can you use your fat head for once and think for yourself? Or are you afraid you’ll get demoted to second-favorite if she catches you?” Catra growls, blue and yellow gleaming in the dull light. Others have recoiled from these vicious expressions, largely to avoid a conflict that would wind up involving superior officers. Adora, however, is not frightened.

“I’m not her favorite, Catra! She treats us the same. If you didn’t have such a bad attitude all the time maybe she wouldn’t be so harsh on you.” Catra hates this about Adora, hates her willful ignorance about what occurs before her very eyes. 

“If she wasn’t such a shithead—” Genuinely, Catra is surprised at the hand that slaps over her mouth. 

“Shh! Are you crazy?! If she hears you call her that…” There is a wild panic in Adora’s eyes, turning to look over her shoulder at the door that remains shut. Were Catra in any real fear of getting caught, she might have rethought her rebuttal. Alas, her penchant for impulsive decision making is growing with her. Leaning back, skull knocking softly against the wall, she rolls her lips back over her fangs and bites Adora’s hovering hand. 

The blonde yelps, jerking her arm back and smacking it against the wall with a loud thud. Catra smirks, tail curling as she looks quite pleased with herself. 

“Ow! That hur—” A beam of light flares in their space, temporarily blinding as a surveillance drone rips open the door. Its internal processor whirls, sweeping the two cadets with a scan before it beeps and backs away. Squinting against the bright overhead lamps in the hall, the two shuffle and sway with nervous energy as they follow in its wake. It makes another sound, a ping, and its optical lens stays red. Catra’s stomach drops so hard and fast from under her that she becomes dizzy. 

_ Standby. Force Captain Grizzlor will be arriving shortly for inspection.  _

Catra is aware of where this is going. Grizzlor will show up, berate them, take them both to Shadow Weaver for punishment, and somehow she would be the one left to soak the damage from a beating. 

Across her shoulder blades the newest patch of jagged scar tissue itches. 

She closes her eyes, takes a breath. She can feel Adora shifting beside her, occasionally knocking elbows to get her attention, but Catra refuses to look. It’s a personal vengeance, one she gives the taller girl because she knows it stresses her need for communication. Adora will be riddled with anxiety and guilt over this, lying awake in her bunk all night long. 

Catra was hardly ever back before the day moons rose over things like this. A mild solace was knowing how awful Adora was going to feel during that time. 

“Of course it’s you two,” Grizzlor’s gruff voice echoes off the walls. Catra glares at him as he peers over her head. He’s more than two heads taller than them, but Adora is growing all the time. Catra, however, is already subscribed to the belief that she isn’t getting much bigger than she currently is. “More contraband? Come on, let’s get this over with.”

A rough shove and they both stumble forward. The closer they draw to Shadow Weaver’s domain, the more Catra realizes that she is shaking. Fingers roll into tight fists to hide the tremor at their tips, willing her fur to stay flat and the sweat to dry. She’s not sure when she tunes out, startling from the protection of her mind when a door slides open before her and Grizzlor pushes them inside. 

“Close the door behind you, Grizzlor.” Shadow Weaver says without moving, currently fixed upon something in the glowing green basin by an unused console. Adora tries again to get Catra’s attention with a gentle brush of elbows, but this time Catra reacts. A thin hiss, like a leak of steam from a cracked pipe, releases from her clenched teeth. At this, Shadow Weaver turns with narrowed, bone-white eyes. 

“Yet again, Adora must suffer for your insistence on being irresponsible and belligerent. You have been told that contraband is confiscated from rebel camps. It is only by luck that you haven’t stuffed your face with poison.” Shadow Weaver’s approach is silent, her figure stretching in the shadows that crawl like bodies from beneath her tattered robe. “Is that all you wish to contribute, Catra? You want to sabotage Adora and take her place?” A gray hand wrenches in her hair, twisting around a handful near her ear. Adora lets out a cry, then, getting held at bay when she tries to get between them. 

“Please! She didn’t make me do anything! Catra would never hurt me! We were just curious, we’ll never do it again!” Adora insists with tears in her eyes. Shadow Weaver looks only long enough to see the bruise flowering on the cadet’s hand. 

“Adora, I know you try your best to put her on the right path, but you must not put your future at risk for a worthless, lazy, vindictive creature like Catra.” Her tone at once morphs into something like tenderness. Though, finding the difference in pain from the sting of a bee or a wasp boiled down to tolerance. 

“Blah blah blah, I get it. I’m terrible, can we get on with this already?” Catra spits, squirming against the ache of her burning scalp. Her features are contorted in a wince, pinching into a seething defiance that Shadow Weaver loathes. The door behind them opens with a wave of Shadow Weaver’s hand, and Adora visibly sags in defeat before she complies with the dismissal. Plunged into the familiar dark, Catra is not at all relieved. 

“One day, I’ll find an excuse to be rid of you for good.” The sorceress snarls. Her palm raises to press against Catra’s cheek, crackling with red light that arcs in bolts of snapping heat. 

After every blow and every shock, Catra goads her on. Shadow Weaver would only have the last word when she was unconscious, or dead. 

They don’t have funerals in the Fright Zone. Dead soldiers were not buried, they were incinerated to prevent a mess. Clean and efficient. Catra has seen many bones go up in flames, nose pressed to the glass in morbid fascination. Cadets left to the whims of boredom conjured horror stories, spooking the younger force with false eye-witness accounts of captains depositing the leftover ash into the mix for the ration bars. 

Catra knows, from all the time spent on her knees spitting up her own blood, that she would never go quietly. If she is going to die, she will be sure to splatter all over everything Shadow Weaver loves, forcing her to clean up her biggest failure with her bare hands. She’d stain the black garnet for days, if only to cause the sorceress ire and waste her time. 

The picture makes her laugh, and she bites her tongue when her body seizes from another wave of white-hot static and pain. 

  
  
  


* * *

The taste of the air changes; iron fills her senses. Catra lifts her head from the floor, snapping to look at where the disturbance originates. Exposure to magic leaves one different and whenever she feels its use she bristles. For an impossible moment, the darkness thickens in the far corner of the spare bedroom (dungeon), and a shape distinguishes itself among the formless shadows. Eyes like chips of ice are cut within the surface of the mask, Shadow Weaver’s gait slower and decidedly  _ mortal _ without the aid of her power to keep her aloft. Before she can contemplate on the intrusion, Catra’s body reacts. Pain lances through her torso as she jumps to her feet, keeping her spine curled while she glares at the woman. 

“Pretty sure the Queen told you to buzz off. I guess I should have known you’d do whatever you wanted from the Hordak incident.” Catra sneers, dehydration drying her words. “Can’t wait to see how this doesn’t work out for you, too.” 

Petulant until the end. 

“I’m not surprised at your lack of gratitude.” Shadow Weaver drawls, rubbing the remnants of a glowing powder between her hands. She is different in a way Catra hasn’t noticed before, squinting at the gray outline of her appearance. The only magic she can smell is smeared on her palms, her hair is flat instead of slithering like a tangle of snakes, and her voice is absent of the energetic malice she once reserved for Catra alone. The observation distracts her, faltering with a retort until her eyes settle on the crack that cuts right through the middle of her mask—a reminder of the damage Catra  _ could  _ have inflicted if she had wanted to. 

“Grateful? I have to see your ugly face every day. I’d rather be in a cell in the Fright Zone by myself.” Catra crosses her arms over her chest as she speaks, one ear flicking down at the twinge of pain from her earlier assault. 

“Yes, you’re still alive. Uncooperative, dangerous, and an enemy, yet here you are. I had advised the Queen to put you out of your misery, but they are convinced that you can provide information.” Though Catra cannot see the sorceress’s eyes, she can feel them moving and glances at the floor. At her feet is a red smear, and the black line across her abdomen has only darkened the shirt further.

“Did you really come in here just to insult me? What do you want, Shadow Weaver?” Catra’s ears flatten with her hiss, turned down against her skull as her stomach twists. There is a baleful promise that accompanies the old woman’s presence. Even without her power from the black garnet, Catra knows that she will always be capable of terrible things. The fur along her tail fluffs out as the sorceress raises her hand, bits of the glimmering powder catching the soft blue light of the seal. “What are you doing? I’ll scream for the guards if you don’t stop!” Catra’s words thicken halfway through her throat, nearly choked by her fear as she begins to recognize the symbol being drawn before her. 

“We have interrogated you for weeks and have extracted nothing! I know you’re hiding something, and I know that you are planning some way to spread your condition.” Anger crawls like insects through Shadow Weaver’s reply, palm hovering over the spell as Catra hisses and shrinks against the far wall. “I  _ will _ get it out of you, one way or another.”

“Don’t! I-I’m not hiding anything! I’ve told you, I don’t know what it is! I can’t give you what I don’t have.” The energy in the room shifts around the spell, Catra’s focus narrowing on it until the glyph tattoos itself onto her eyes. Inside her, that entity moves around and through her body, rising up in anticipation. It licks at the slit along her belly, pushing against the healing flesh and bringing a wince to her face. “Please, don’t do this.” Her voice is softer now, quieted by fear. 

“You can cower all you want, Catra, but Adora isn’t here for you to hide behind any longer. I won’t let you continue to drag her down your self destructive crusade. Give me answers, or I’ll be forced to take them from you.” Shadow Weaver is steady as always. She would never hesitate to hurt Catra if it is for Adora’s benefit, though she rarely held back if it wasn’t. The mere mention of the blonde triggers that deep, uncomfortable rage inside of her. It’s a double-sided hate, one that hurts Catra just as much as it does the people around her. 

“It’s Adora’s fault I’m like this, go ask her!” The snap is without thought, an instinctual release of control to her emotions. 

“Typical, unable to accept responsibility for the things you’ve done. And you wonder why she left you in the Fright Zone.”

And with that, Shadow Weaver pushes the spell through the seal. It passes through Catra harmlessly, dispersing as it makes contact with the floor. 

A clawed hand digs at her torso, balling the shirt into fists that tear holes in it. Catra’s eyes tightly shut, spine rolling while her jaw strains open in an attempt to scream. Instead, black, tendrils peel from between her teeth, walking up her face like the long, eerie digits of a hand. It closes around the right side, more oozing from behind her eye to paint it in pitch. Bones audibly crack, shifting as her limbs are forced to stretch. The golden eye flashes open, pupil dilated in terror, fixing upon the sorceress just before it rolls back into her head. 

Bracing one massive hand on the chair, the creature stands—posture hunched as too many teeth crowd into its unnaturally wide mouth. Its form bears the details provided by Scorpia, twitching and blinking in and out of reality, reappearing differently or briefly changed. Closer or farther, more like Catra and less, coiling or stagnant. It’s dizzying. 

This is a similar outcome to when a truth spell was applied before, albeit one that was not as strong as the glyph Shadow Weaver had just used. Silence envelops them and even the starlight seems to dim—swallowed into that open, black hole between dripping fangs. A glaring white border strikes across its body, the event horizon to mark where all things must end. 

It regards the woman before it with chittering teeth, creating a discordant noise that screeches within the privacy of the skull. Approaching the edge of the seal closest to Shadow Weaver, its proximity forces her to take a step backward. It looms taller than She-Ra, gangly limbs nearly touching the floor. 

The creature raises its massive black hand, talons flexing against the barrier and causing it to tremble and threaten to be disrupted. A voice emerges from its unmoving lips, tinged with the familiar, rough tones of its host. The words echo around the room, both near and far, as though they originate from every dark, hidden place. 

_ “Parasite.”  _

The gap between them is bridged, a force compelling the sorceress forward. She must crane her neck to look up into that black eye, and when she does her blood turns to ice in her veins. Ever so faint, another line cuts through that star-bright pupil, turning it from a slit into a cross. 

“I know you.” Shadow Weaver’s whisper is low with awe. Its grin is undaunted, the ink latched onto Catra’s skin peeling away to lash at the walls of the seal. The spell keeping it trapped inside fizzles for just a moment, the reason for its smile suddenly clear. 

_ “Seed Of The End.” _

Shadow Weaver reacts on instinct, using what little of the magic powder she has left to hastily scrawl a glyph as the beast scratches across the floor to break apart the seal. Just as the spell passes over it, the barrier falls. 

Catra collapses, body spasming as the substance retreats within the safety of its host. 

Breaths shallow, the sorceress gets to work on repairing the seal. She spares not another moment for inspection when it is complete, bleeding back into the shadows from whence she came. 


End file.
